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Pope Leo has instructed Catholics not to refer to Mary as having helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation, amid the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues and self-styled prophets.
A decree from the Vatican’s doctrinal office approved by the pontiff says Jesus alone saved humanity from hellfire and therefore Catholics must not call Mary the “co-redeemer” or “co-redemptrix”, ending a long-running debate among church scholars that has even divided popes.
It says Jesus saved the world through his sacrificial death on the cross and that while Mary paved the way for the redemption by giving birth to him, she was not a “co-redeemer”.
The late Pope Francis was vehemently against calling Mary a “co-redeemer”, saying in 2019 that it was “foolishness” because “she never wanted take anything for herself from her son”.
His predecessor Benedict XVI also opposed the title. John Paul II, the pope from 1978 to his death in 2005, was a proponent but stopped using the title publicly in the mid-1990s amid growing scepticism.
According to the decree, the title “creates confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith” and “carries the risk of eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ”.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, wrote in a preface to the decree that it was a response to questions in recent years about devotion to Mary and to clarify what is acceptable.
“There are some Marian reflection groups, publications, new devotions, and even requests for Marian dogmas that do not share the same characteristics as popular devotion,” he wrote, adding that some devotional practices expressed “intensely through social media” could sow confusion among Catholics.
Iacopo Scaramuzzi, the Vatican correspondent for La Repubblica newspaper, said the decree was a way of putting the brakes on “the cult of the Madonna”. “The Vatican is cracking down on a devotion which is spreading on social media, and which is a specific devotion embraced especially by conservative Catholics,” he said.
Last year the Vatican tightened rules surrounding supernatural phenomena such as apparitions of the Virgin Mary amid a crackdown on scams and hoaxes, which have proliferated in the age of social media.
Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”, in what was believed to have been an indirect reference to a woman who drew thousands of pilgrims to a town near Rome to pray before a statue that she claimed shed tears of blood. “When Marian devotion is too self-centred, it’s not good,” Francis said.
Robert Mickens, a Rome-based Vatican expert, said the latest move would please progressive Catholics. “Mary’s considered the most exalted of all human creatures but she’s not semi-divine,” he said.
