Vatican honors Hinduism, Islam with dance celebration on anniversary of Nostra Aetate

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Vatican honors Hinduism, Islam with dance celebration on anniversary of Nostra Aetate

During the dances at the Vatican, a woman alternately held up signs with an 'Om' Hindu symbol, a picture of a crucifix, and an Islamic crescent and moon.

Oct 29, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican celebrated on Tuesday the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, by paying homage through dance to Hinduism and Islam alongside Christianity.

A recording of the commemoration, held in the Paul VI Hall, shows women dressed in traditional-style garb dancing to Eastern and Middle Eastern music. During the dances, a woman alternately held up signs with an “Om” Hindu symbol, a picture of a crucifix, and an Islamic crescent and moon, as if to suggest that all religions are on equal footing.

The entire event, including the concluding speech by Pope Leo XIV, was permeated by the value of dialogue and “friendship” between religions rather than the traditional Christian mandate to “go and make disciples of all nations,” that is, convert them to the true faith.

Leo said during his closing remarks that Nostra Aetate “opened our eyes to a simple yet profound principle: dialogue is not a tactic or a tool, but it’s a way of life – a journey of the heart that transforms everyone involved.” This statement suggests, contrary to Christ’s Great Commission, that dialogue is not meant to be a means toward conversion, but rather an end in itself.

Nostra Aetate itself is marked by this false ecumenical attitude, since it “does not actually exhort non-Christians to convert to Christ and His Church in order ‘to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,’” as Matt Gaspers has noted for Catholic Family News.

The document instead claims that the Church “esteems” non-Christian religions and “exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions … they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.”

Nostra Aetate goes so far as to suggest that men can reach God through pagan religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, in stark contradiction to the longstanding teaching of the Church and the Syllabus of Errors’ condemnation of the idea that “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.”

The Vatican II document falsely claims that “in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery,” and that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men … may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.”

So-called “liberation” or “illumination” is impossible through a non-Christian, pagan religion such as Buddhism or Hinduism. By worshipping multiple false gods, these religions in reality pays homage to demons, as both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures affirm: “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens.” (Ps. 95:5) “But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with devils.” (1 Cor. 10:19-20)

[...]Archbishop Guido Pozzo, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, pointed out about a decade ago that “Nostra Aetate does not have any dogmatic authority, and thus one cannot demand from anyone to recognize this declaration as being dogmatic.”

During Tuesday’s Vatican celebration, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, shared that Nostra Aetate, remarkably, was in part prompted by the request of a Jewish historian.

“On the occasion of the meeting between Jules Isaac and Pope John XXIII on June 13, 1960, the Jewish historian presented the pope with a memorandum urgently calling for a new (way) of the Church relationship with today’s (man),” said Koch. “Pope John took up this request and commissioned the drafting of a declaration which … resulted in Nostra Aetate.”

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Leo XIV: "All Religions Are Mothers. All Believers are Brothers"

gloria.tv | October 28, 2025

This evening, Pope Leo XIV participated in a niche interreligious gathering organised by the Sant’Egido Community at the Colosseum.

At the beginning, Andrea Riccardi emphasised that “the Spirit of Assisi still blows”.

Representatives of various religions were present, including Christian sects, as well as representatives of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths. Together, they lit small candles.

Leo XIV held a speech praising the false religions and spiritualties. His key points were:

- We have prayed for peace according to our diverse religious traditions.

- This is our witness: offering the immense treasures of ancient spiritualities to contemporary humanity.

- On 27 October 1986, Saint John Paul IIinvited religious leaders from around the world to Assisi to pray for peace. This historic event marked a turning point in interfaith relations.

- We embrace the challenge of Assisi and the awareness of our shared task and responsibility for peace.

- For the Catholic Church, prayer in the “spirit of Assisi” is based on the solid foundation set out in the Second Vatican Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate.

- Together we reaffirm our commitment to dialogue and to fraternity.

- All believers are brothers and sisters. And religions, as “mothers,” must encourage peoples to treat each other as family, not as enemies.

- We must ensure that this period of history, marked by war and the arrogance of power, soon comes to an end. Enough! This is the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. Enough!

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See also: Archbishop Lefebvre - On the Second Vatican Council

• "This Council represents, in our view and in the view of the Roman authorities, a new Church which they call the Conciliar Church." (Le Figaro, August 4, 1976)
  
• "It is not we who are in schism but the Conciliar Church." (Homily preached at Lille, August 29, 1976)
  

... more here: Archbishop Lefebvre - On the new Conciliar Church


Also:

Quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre - On Ecumenism

• “Ecumenism is not the Church’s mission. The Church is not ecumenical, she is missionary. The goal of the missionary Church is to convert. The goal of the ecumenical Church is to find what is true in errors and to remain at this level. It is to deny the truth of the Church.” (April 14, 1978)
  

• “… and this, it is really the modern heresy, that we can really designate under this new term, for it really seems that there is a new heresy in addition to modernism, liberalism, and all those old errors, it seems to me that we can define this modern error: ecumenism, this false ecumenism.” (Conference at Econe, May 16, 1978)
  

• “Then came this abominable ecumenism which is nothing but the means to penetrate liberal ideas within the Church, because it is the principle of Religious Liberty, a principle which is in the constitution, in the Declaration of Human Rights.” (Conference, December 21, 1984)
  

• "We want to be in perfect unity with the Holy Father, but in the unity of the Catholic Faith, because there is only this unity that can unite us. But not this kind of ecumenical union, a sort of liberal ecumenism, because I think this is what best defines modern tendencies and what we could almost express as the 'modern heresy.' As I had the occasion to say in Essen, I think that what best defines the whole crisis in the Church is really this liberal ecumenical spirit. I say liberal ecumenism because there is a certain ecumenism that, if properly defined, could be acceptable. But liberal ecumenism, such as is practiced by the present Church and especially since Vatican II, necessarily carries true heresies." (Conference of April 14, 1978)
  

• “The Church, in the course of the 1960's, thus during the Council, acquired values that have come from outside the Church, from the liberal culture - due secoli - from two centuries of liberal culture. It is clear: these are the "rights" of man, it is Religious Freedom, it is Ecumenism. It is Satanic.” (Conference, December 13, 1984)
  

• “In this world, there are forces opposed to Our Lord, and to his reign. Satan and all the auxiliaries of Satan, conscious or unconscious, refuse this reign, this way of salvation and fight for the destruction of the Church. Thus the Church is engaged by her Divine Founder in a gigantic combat. All means were and are employed by Satan to triumph. One of the last, extremely efficacious stratagems is to destroy the combative spirit of the Church by persuading her that there are no more enemies, and that we must put down our arms and enter into a dialogue of peace and cordiality. This fallacious truce will permit the enemy to penetrate everywhere and corrupt the forces of the Church. This truce is liberal ecumenism, a diabolical instrument of auto-destruction of the Church. This liberal ecumenism will result in the neutralisation of the arms which are the liturgy with the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, the breviary, the liturgical feasts, the neutralisation and ceasing of the seminaries…” (Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Seper)
  

• "The enemy of Ecône is not Such-and-Such, at the Vatican or elsewhere. The enemy of Ecône is Liberalism, the destroyer of the Church. And as to the men who serve this liberalism and who aim to cut us down, these are not our personal enemies – they are only pawns of liberalism. One must understand this: Our battle is not a confrontation between persons and characters. It goes well beyond: it is the battle of faith against error." (Vatican Encounter: Conversations with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, by José Hanu)
  

• Jesus is not optional. “Qui non est mecum, contra me est—He that is not with Me is against Me” (Mt. 12:30). To deny this is the fundamental error of religious liberty and ecumenism. Lefebvre, Marcel, Spiritual Journey. Kansas City: Angelus Press, E-Book
  

• And by this very fact, this “Mystery of our Faith” [the traditional Mass] overwhelms all the errors of Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Modernism, and materialistic, socialist and communist secularism. No error can withstand our holy Catholic Mass. The Mass is anti ecumenical, in the sense of ecumenism practiced since the Council: namely, the union of all religions in an amalgam of prayer without dogma, without morality, without specific laws, and agreement based on a few ambiguous slogans like “the rights of man,” “the dignity of man,” “religious liberty.”  On the contrary, the Novus Ordo is precisely the banner of this false ecumenism, representing the annihilation of the Catholic religion and the Catholic priesthood. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, February 1982)
  

• Satan, the father of lies, as Our Lord Jesus calls him, has the extraordinary talent of finding out some words, to which he assigns a new meaning so that from their ambiguity, he achieves acceptance of the destructive falsehood which overthrows the best established societies. He found it in this “ecumenism” of the Council which has created an ecumenical liturgy, an ecumenical Bible, and ecumenical catechism, uniting truth and falsehood – marrying the true and the false. The most disastrous result of this marriage is the Catholic-Protestant Mass, the poisoned source afterwards yielding countless ravages: relinquishment of the Church, of the true Faith, sacrileges, tearing of the unity of the Church, proliferation of diverse sorts of creeds unworthy of the Church.
  
  But, there exists a consequence of which one does not often enough ponder on. It is the destruction of the Catholic nations which no longer find in the Holy Mass, the source of political unity based on the unity of the Catholic Faith. Therefore, the Catholic nation hereafter must, in like manner, convert itself to an ecumenical state – pluralistic, very soon finding itself securalized and neutral, if not atheistic. The ecumencial Mass leads logically to apostasy. One cannot serve two masters, one cannot nourish oneself indifferently from truth or falsehood. It is falsehood that flatters our evil inclinations which will prevail over truth which is more austere and more demanding. One must, at all costs, remain bound to truth without mingling. Pope Pius IX vigorously denounced these liberal Catholics who believe they can unite falsehood and truth, good and evil, in order to please their contemporary fellowmen. Whether this poisoned ecumenism reaches us through the hierarchy or not, the channel is not important – it is the poison that one must refuse to swallow. It is a matter of strict obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ, to the Church of all times, to all the successors of Peter. We will, therefore, keep the Catholic liturgy, the Catholic Bible and catechism. ... Each one, at his time in the Church, must endeavour to remain Catholic and to maintain the Catholic Church. It is upon this resolution and its realisation that we will be judged by Our Divine Lord. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, March 1978)
  

• Because we are surrounded by the ruins caused by the corruption of minds and hearts, the evidence of the vitality of the Church of all time takes on a priceless value. We are permitted to hope that we can restore destroyed altars, that we can offer again the true Sacrifice of the Mass. By contrast, when one lives with an ecumenical Eucharist, democratic and liberal, the auto-destruction continues, despite all the calls to order, the statements most worthy of respect and the most spectacular of ceremonies. “Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam – If the Lord does not construct the building, the builders work in vain.” Therefore, the altar of sacrifice of propitiation, the heritage of the new and eternal testament; the Body and Blood of Jesus are the foundation stone of the Church from whence gush the waters of eternal life. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, October 1979)
  

• Through Religious Liberty we’ve ended up with Ecumenism, and through that all the ‘reforms’ which have been carried out in the Church, the introduction of Collegiality to please the Protestants and the democratic spirit of our age. Everything came through this acceptance of Religious Liberty and the principles of the modern world. It’s clear, and if we don’t keep that in mind, we cannot understand what took place behind the scenes at the Council, nor what happens today behind the scenes in the Vatican. ... Our Lord came to earth to institute the true religion. There is only one religion. Those who have not converted to it will not be able to enter heaven. Our Lord said to His Apostles: “Go, teach all nations.” He didn’t say: leave the Buddhists alone, the Muslims, the pagans, leave them be. They each have their own religion, no need to bother them. The missionaries went out, they were killed, they shed their blood, they became martyrs. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Conference in Madrid, 1986)