Understanding Cardinal Koovakad's Assisi Commentary and Doctrine

The ordinary Magisterium, the false analogy with Pentecost, and the attempt to make acceptance of a controversial papal initiative a measure of Catholic fidelity

Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad claims that the 1986 Assisi gathering has entered the Church’s ordinary Magisterium, associates traditionalist opposition with schismatic rupture, and invokes Pentecost to justify its interreligious symbolism. Each argument raises a different theological difficulty. Together, they expose a persistent confusion between Catholic doctrine, pastoral precedent and ecclesiastical authority.

The Catholic Church possesses a Magisterium. She does not possess an archive of papal events which become doctrinally authoritative through repetition, commemoration or the retrospective approval of successive pontificates. Popes teach, govern, convene meetings, undertake journeys and make prudential judgements. These activities may express Catholic teaching, but they are not thereby transformed into doctrine. Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, has obscured this elementary distinction in an address commemorating the interreligious gathering convened by John Paul II at Assisi on 27 October 1986. More remarkably still, he has invoked Pentecost in support of his argument and associated traditionalist criticism of the gathering with schismatic rupture.

Speaking at the Pontifical University Antonianum on 7 October 2026, Cardinal Koovakad traced the development of the spirit of Assisi through successive pontificates to Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. Referring to paragraph 223, he declared: «Con queste parole il 27 ottobre 1986 entra nell’insegnamento ordinario del Magistero» — with these words, 27 October 1986 enters the ordinary teaching of the Magisterium. Assisi, he continued, was no longer merely an event to remember but «un criterio con cui leggere il presente», a criterion for interpreting the present. Earlier, he had remarked that traditionalist circles opposed the original gathering to the point of making it one of the reasons for a schismatic rupture.¹

These are the Cardinal’s words, not an inference drawn from an antagonistic headline. They require examination because the distinction between what is taught and what is done belongs to the foundations of Catholic ecclesiology. An event does not become an exercise of the Magisterium merely because a Pope organised it. Nor does a Pope’s subsequent commendation of an event establish the theological correctness of every action performed during it. Cardinal Koovakad has not formally declared Assisi an infallible dogma, and it would be inaccurate to accuse him of doing so. His assertion is nevertheless more substantial than a harmless rhetorical flourish. It proposes that a historically contested pastoral initiative has acquired a magisterial significance which makes it normative for the present.

But what does Leo XIV actually teach? Paragraph 223 of Magnifica Humanitas concerns interreligious dialogue, the rejection of violence and the duty not to invoke God in justification of terrorism or war. The Pope cites the spirit of Assisi as an illustration of believers drawing upon elements of their respective traditions which encourage peace rather than hatred. Those propositions belong to the encyclical. They may be assessed according to the authority proper to authentic papal teaching. The paragraph does not declare every religious act performed at Assisi legitimate, adjudicate the theological objections raised against the original gathering, or require Catholics to regard its particular arrangements as exemplary.²

The magisterial proposition and the historical example employed to illustrate it are not the same thing. A Pope may teach authoritatively concerning peace while making a contingent judgement about the best means of promoting it. He may defend a genuine moral principle while choosing a public expression of that principle which remains open to criticism. To deny that distinction would be to confer upon pastoral decisions an authority which the Church has never attributed to them. It would also diminish the genuine Magisterium by making it responsible for the supposed theological perfection of every historical initiative subsequently invoked in its support.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed precisely this problem in Donum Veritatis, the instruction issued under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1990. The document affirms the obligation of religious submission to authentic non-definitive teaching, while expressly recognising that certain magisterial interventions contain contingent and prudential elements. Paragraph 24 acknowledges that particular judgements may not be free from deficiencies, and that difficulties concerning their form, timing or content must be evaluated according to the nature and authority of the intervention.³ This does not authorise private individuals to substitute their judgement for the teaching office of the Church. It establishes that theological fidelity requires an accurate understanding of what the Magisterium is actually proposing.

Nuntiatoria examined the underlying methodological difficulty in Nostra Aetate at Sixty: When Dialogue Becomes a Theological Principle. A council commends a pastoral approach. The approach becomes established practice. Institutions and theological explanations develop around it. Eventually, the accumulated practice is presented as though its entire subsequent development had already been authorised by the original conciliar text. The same difficulty was identified in The Council, the Reform, and the Missing “Thus”: authorisation of reform does not establish that every subsequent development was either necessary or faithful to the authorisation given.⁴ Cardinal Koovakad’s intervention appears to take the process one stage further. The practice has not merely become accepted; its historical reception is invoked as a source of authority in its own right.

His argument becomes more problematic when he invokes Pentecost. Discussing the contrast between Babel and the diversity of peoples, he characterises Assisi as the practical expression of a common pursuit of peace without religious uniformity. Each participant retains his own tradition; all gather for a shared purpose. This, he declares, is the logic of Pentecost, referring to Leo XIV’s address at UNESCO on 25 September.¹

At first sight, the comparison possesses an attractive simplicity. Pentecost overcame the division of languages without abolishing their diversity. Assisi gathered different religious traditions without attempting to construct a single universal religion. Both events may therefore appear to illustrate a unity which does not require uniformity. As a limited metaphor for human cooperation, the comparison might be understood. As a theological explanation of interreligious prayer, however, it fails at the decisive point.

At Pentecost, the Apostles did not assemble representatives of different religions to offer their respective acts of worship. They proclaimed one revealed Faith in languages understood by the peoples gathered in Jerusalem. The multitude heard the Apostles speaking the wonderful works of God, and St Peter publicly preached Jesus Christ crucified and risen. His hearers were not invited to remain content with their differing religious convictions. They were called to repentance, Baptism and incorporation into the Church. The diversity was linguistic and cultural; the message was one. The miracle did not affirm religious plurality as an enduring theological good. It enabled the universal proclamation of the Gospel.⁵

Indeed, Leo XIV’s own UNESCO address makes the distinction clearer than Cardinal Koovakad’s application of it. Speaking of Pentecost, the Pope explicitly identified its announcement as the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus and the salvation which gives hope to the world. The one message was heard in different languages. That is not the same as representatives of contradictory religions successively offering their own prayers according to their own theological beliefs. The Pope’s biblical image concerns the universal intelligibility of Christian truth; the Cardinal has employed it to illustrate the public coexistence of different religious professions.⁶

There is no need to accuse Koovakad of consciously teaching religious equivalence. He expressly rejects the creation of a universal religion in which doctrinal differences disappear. But an argument can remain defective even when its author disavows the error to which its reasoning might lead. If Pentecost is invoked as the theological model for Assisi, the essential question becomes unavoidable: where, in the gathering of 1986, was the corresponding proclamation of the one Faith to which the nations were summoned? A common desire for peace, however commendable, is not the same thing as the Apostolic proclamation of salvation in Jesus Christ.

This distinction matters because John Paul II himself considered Assisi sufficiently novel to require doctrinal safeguards. Before the gathering, he distinguished between coming together in order to pray and engaging in a common interreligious prayer. The participants would pray according to their separate religious traditions and subsequently offer prayers successively in one another’s presence. The Pope insisted that the meeting must not be interpreted as religious syncretism. Cardinal Koovakad reproduces that distinction in his own address, claiming that the event involved neither a mixture of rites nor ambiguous common prayer.¹

The precautions were genuine. They demonstrate what John Paul II intended to avoid. But they do not settle everything which critics questioned. The difference between simultaneous and successive prayers concerns the structure of the gathering. It does not, by itself, determine the theological propriety of facilitating non-Christian acts of worship in places assigned under Catholic auspices, including Catholic sacred buildings. Nor does it establish that the symbolism of the event adequately communicated the unique authority of divine Revelation. Public religious actions have a meaning which cannot always be controlled by qualifications supplied in explanatory addresses.

Benedict XVI recognised the continuing importance of those qualifications. In his letter marking the twentieth anniversary of Assisi, dated 2 September 2006, he praised John Paul II’s initiative while warning against relativistic and syncretistic interpretations. His defence depended upon the preservation of Catholic doctrinal distinctions.⁷ He did not need to argue that the gathering had become immune from criticism through the passage of time.

The unresolved issue has become more conspicuous through subsequent developments. Nuntiatoria’s From Assisi to Osaka: When Dialogue Becomes Worship examined the use of Osaka’s Catholic cathedral for Shinto and Buddhist religious observances and the precedent supplied by Assisi. The question was not whether Catholics might cooperate with non-Christians, defend their religious liberty or acknowledge truths accessible through natural reason. It was whether the positive exercise of non-Christian worship within a consecrated Catholic setting could be justified by reference to the Church’s received doctrine.⁸

Invoking Nostra aetate does not resolve that question. The declaration encourages dialogue and collaboration, but expressly maintains the Church’s obligation to proclaim Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos, although directed principally against particular forms of pan-Christian association, warned against religious initiatives founded upon the supposed equivalence of different religious professions. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Dominus Iesus reaffirmed the unique and universal salvific mediation of Jesus Christ and rejected theories which compromise the distinction between Christian Revelation and other religions.⁹ These teachings must govern the interpretation of Assisi. They cannot be displaced by the historical precedent which they are being asked to justify.

Here lies the broader concern developed in Nuntiatoria’s Truth Must Be Confessed; Persons Must Be Loved. Respect for another person does not entail theological affirmation of his religion. Catholics may protect non-Christians against injustice, cooperate with them in works of charity and seek peaceful relations without suggesting that mutually contradictory claims about God are equally authoritative. In Peace Without the King, Unity Without the Church, Nuntiatoria examined the related tendency to allow fraternity and common action to become the practical organising principles of ecclesiastical activity while the Church’s supernatural mission is increasingly confined to a theoretical qualification.¹⁰ The common good is a genuine moral responsibility. It does not replace the supreme good towards which the Church must direct souls.

The Cardinal’s reference to schism raises a separate but equally consequential difficulty. His description of traditionalist opponents as integralisti who made Assisi a reason for schismatic rupture plainly alludes to the wider conflict involving Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Historically, Lefebvre criticised the gathering, and opposition to post-conciliar ecumenism formed part of his dispute with Rome. But criticism of Assisi and the episcopal consecrations of 1988 were not identical acts. John Paul II’s Ecclesia Dei adflicta identified the consecrations without pontifical mandate, in their particular circumstances, as the schismatic act. It did not declare disagreement with an interreligious gathering to be schism.¹¹

Canon 751 defines schism by reference to refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or communion with those subject to him. A Catholic may recognise the Pope’s legitimate authority, remain within ecclesiastical communion and nevertheless question the prudence or theological propriety of an event which the Pope has sponsored. That criticism may be mistaken. It may be excessive or poorly expressed. It may even become entangled with a wider repudiation of ecclesiastical authority. But the further conclusion must be demonstrated, not presumed from disagreement itself. Historical association is not canonical proof.

Nuntiatoria has consistently maintained this distinction, most recently in Attendance Is Not Schism: Rome, the SSPX and the Canonical Rights of the Laity. Specific canonical offences, personal culpability and adherence to a schismatic position cannot simply be inferred from association with a disputed movement. Conversely, Resistance or Rupture? Pompei, Viganò and the Meaning of “Capital Schism” rejected the contention that criticism of alleged abuses of ecclesiastical authority confers private jurisdiction to determine whether the Pope has forfeited his office.¹² The same Catholic principles govern both questions. Papal authority cannot be dismissed by private judgement; neither can every criticism of papal action be dismissed as resistance to that authority.

The contradiction is particularly visible at Assisi itself. In September, as Nuntiatoria reported in The Creed Outside the Basilica, an SSPX pilgrimage was permitted to enter the Basilica of St Francis for private prayer but prevented from entering corporately to sing the Catholic Creed. The Franciscan authorities defended the restriction by reference to canonical communion while maintaining their welcome for authorised ecumenical prayer involving separated Christians. The Society overstated aspects of its complaint, and the cases were not canonically identical. Nevertheless, the underlying contrast deserved examination. A corporate profession of the Catholic Creed by traditionalist pilgrims constituted a disciplinary problem, while the interreligious legacy of Assisi remained the object of institutional celebration.¹³

Cardinal Koovakad has since carried the anniversary’s message to Westminster Cathedral. Addressing an interreligious gathering there on 17 October, he expressed the hope that the unity manifested among believers of different religions at Assisi might continue to grow and become a beacon of hope for the world.¹⁴ Understood as cooperation for peace, the aspiration is intelligible. Understood as religious unity, it demands qualification. The Catholic Church cannot equate a shared humanitarian purpose with the supernatural communion established through faith in Christ. The distinction is not an obstacle to genuine friendship; it is what permits friendship to exist without requiring either party to misrepresent what he believes.

Cardinal Koovakad could have defended Assisi without raising these difficulties. He could have acknowledged the Cold War circumstances of 1986, John Paul II’s intention to challenge the apparent inevitability of conflict, and the genuine importance of cooperation against religiously justified violence. He could have explained the safeguards against syncretism and considered whether the event’s public symbolism had adequately expressed them. He could have defended the teaching of Magnifica Humanitas without appearing to elevate the historical gathering into a norm of Catholic orthodoxy. Above all, he could have answered the theological criticisms directly rather than introducing an association with schism.

Instead, his address illustrates the ecclesiastical habit which Nuntiatoria has repeatedly challenged. A pastoral initiative establishes a precedent; the precedent becomes established practice; the practice acquires an institutional and theological rationale; and its continued endorsement is subsequently presented as evidence that the original objections have been settled. What requires demonstration is treated as already proved by the history of its acceptance. The process may establish continuity of policy. It does not establish continuity of doctrine.

The point is not that legitimate development is impossible, nor that a Catholic may disregard authentic teaching whenever it appears uncongenial. The Church’s authority is divinely instituted, and Catholic communion requires genuine submission to the Roman Pontiff. But that very obligation demands an accurate account of what the Pope has taught, what he has decided prudentially, and what later commentators have inferred from his decisions. To treat those categories as interchangeable is not a defence of papal authority. It is a distortion of its nature.

Nuntiatoria CXXVIII adopted the maxim Non potest veritas subdi potestati: truth cannot be made subject to power.¹⁵ The Pope receives the deposit of Faith; he does not manufacture it. His authority exists to preserve and expound divine Revelation, not to confer retrospective doctrinal perfection upon every historical initiative associated with a pontificate. Nor does the subsequent commendation of an event relieve theologians of the obligation to examine whether its practices adequately expressed the Faith which the Church professes.

The measure of Assisi remains the Catholic Faith, not the other way around. Its intentions may be commended where they were good. Its achievements may be acknowledged. Its religious symbolism and pastoral arrangements remain subject to examination according to the Church’s doctrine concerning divine Revelation, true worship and the unique mediation of Jesus Christ. No anniversary, encyclical reference or cardinalitial address can eliminate that responsibility.

Cardinal Koovakad has invoked Pentecost. He should therefore follow the comparison to its conclusion. The Apostles did not summon the nations to celebrate their different religions. They proclaimed one Lord, one Faith and one Baptism, and called their hearers to conversion. Their message was universal because its truth was not negotiable.

Assisi may serve as a historical example of the pursuit of peace. It cannot authenticate its own theological legitimacy, still less become a criterion by which Catholics who question it are judged.

An event is not doctrine. Criticism is not schism. And Pentecost was the proclamation of one Faith, not the celebration of many.