‘It was Jesus who saved the world, not His Mother Mary’ — Vatican

A depiction of Jesus with his mother Mary from a painting by Greek painter El Greco. 

VATICAN CITY, Rome — Jesus may have heard words of wisdom from his mother Mary, but she did not help him save the world from damnation, the Vatican pointed out in a new decree approved by Pope Leo XIV. 

In an unprecedented announcement, the Vatican’s top doctrinal office instructed the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics not to refer to Mary as the ‘co-redeemer’ of the world.

“Jesus alone saved the world,” asserted the new instruction, settling an internal debate that had befuddled senior Church figures for decades and even sparked rare open disagreement among recent popes.

“It would not be appropriate to use the title ‘co-redemptrix’. This title . . . (can) create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith,” the instruction clearly stated. 

Most Catholics believe Jesus actually redeemed humanity by his crucifixion and death, but Church scholars have debated for centuries whether Mary, who Catholics and many Christians call the Mother of God, helped Jesus save the world.

Pope Leo’s predecessor, the late Pope Francis, fiercely opposed granting Mary the title of ‘co-redeemer’ and at one point even called the idea as “foolishness.”

“She never wanted to take anything for herself from her son,” Francis, who died in April, noted in 2019.

Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, also opposed the title, but his predecessor, John Paul II, supported it, although he stopped using the title publicly in the mid-1990s after the doctrinal office began expressing scepticism.

Despite the new instruction, it, however, highlighted Mary’s role as an intermediary between God and humanity because by giving birth to Jesus, she “opened the gates of the Redemption that all humanity had awaited.”