Do you worship Jesus or Mary?

To ring in the New Year, Pope Francis offered words of encouragement to his followers throughout the world. Well, that is how the Catholic Church would report it. As you will see from the statements below, Francis was actually espousing false doctrine to the danger of all who were listening.

In one part of the speech, Francis states, “The reassuring and comforting gaze of the Holy Virgin is an encouragement to make sure that this time, granted us by the Lord, might be spent for our human and spiritual growth.” Although Mary is most certainly a special member of the roll call of faith, she is not the one in whom our faith is to be placed and certainly not the one who grants peace. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that Mary is responsible for your salvation, your sanctification or your daily peace. We are to look only to Jesus and no other.

He goes on: “We see that Jesus is not in the crib, and they told me that the Madonna [this is from the Italian, meaning “our lady” and refers to Mary] said: ‘Won’t you let me hold this Son of mine a bit in my arms?’ This is what the Madonna does with us: she wants to hold us in her arms to protect us as she protected and loved her Son. Mary watches over us with maternal tenderness just as she watched over her Son Jesus….”. Again, nowhere in the Word of God does it teach us to place our trust in Mary for all our earthly needs. As the Lord’s Prayer states, it is God who provides our daily bread, not Mary. Additionally, is it not God who watches over us? Mary is not omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, as God is.

Francis continues, “May each one of us make sure that 2021 be for everyone a year of fraternal solidarity and peace, a year filled with expectant trust and hope, which we entrust to the heavenly protection of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother….May the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the ‘Prince of Peace’, and who cuddles him thus, with such tenderness in her arms, obtain for us from heaven the precious gift of peace, which cannot be fully pursued with human force alone.” Although Francis correctly refers to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, he then seems to attribute the same power to Mary, simply because she held Jesus in her arms. There is only One Person that will bring peace to this Earth. The Scriptures are very clear that it will be Jesus who rules and reigns from Jerusalem, thereby establishing a Millennial Reign of peace, followed by the eternal state in which God’s peace will reign forevermore. Mary has no power to do this.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. Francis, in a homily to be read on his behalf at Mass, said, “Mary is not only the bridge joining us to God; she is more. She is the road that God travelled in order to reach us, and the road that we must travel in order to reach him. Through Mary, we encounter God the way he wants us to: in tender love, in intimacy, in the flesh. For Jesus is not an abstract idea; he is real and incarnate; he was ‘born of a woman’ and quietly grew.” As has been the case for many years, Francis continues to wrongly elevate Mary to co-redemptrix. That is to say, he teaches that people must have faith in Mary as much as Jesus. I must reiterate in the strongest terms possible that nowhere in Scripture does it proclaim that a person must exercise faith in Mary in order to receive God’s salvation. Jesus alone proclaimed that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. If you want to be saved into the Kingdom of God, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ – accept that He is the only One who is able to forgive your sin and reconcile you with the Father.

I conclude with the most heretical statement: that Francis believes Mary “can do all things”. No – she most certainly cannot. Mary is a created being, the same as you and I. God can do all things and our faith must be exercised in Him, not Mary.