CHRISTIANNEWS.COM.- In a resounding endorsement of the world’s best-known traitor, the Vatican’s most prestigious publication dedicated its Italian edition to rehabilitating Judas Iscariot through words and art.
The front page of L’Osservatore Romano features a painting of a nude Jesus, by an anonymous artist, depicting him leaning over a dead Judas, who has a red loincloth around his waist. The tree from which the traitorous disciple hung himself appears in the background.
In the cover editorial titled “Judas and the scandal of mercy”, which accompanies the illustration, the director of the newspaper Andrea Monda reveals that L’Osservatore Romano decided this year to highlight the “most tragic and disturbing” figure of the New Will.
Monda, however, does not reveal the name of the painter, nor the title of the painting. Instead, he praises the work for having “dizzying expressive power,” which “can be admired on the cover” of the publication.
Images inspired by Francis
The editorialist explains that the painting is the “fruit of the meditations” of Pope Francis’ book When you ask, say Our Father (When you pray, say Our Father).
In the 2018 book, Francis discusses Judas and God’s mercy, basing his theological argument about the probability of Judas’ salvation on a sculpture of the traitor, carved into a column capital in the Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene in Vézelay. , Burgundy.
Monda informs the reader that Francisco, you have a picture of this sculpture hanging behind your desk in your study and explains that the painting on the cover of L’Osservatore Romano is from the brush of a French Catholic who was inspired by Francis’ reflections on the “same sculpture that portrays Jesus as the Good Shepherd, carrying Judas as the last lost sheep.”
The French Catholic decided to paint this picture and give it to the Pope. This painting of Jesus leaning over Judas now takes pride of place on the wall of the papal study, alongside the image of the sculpture of Jesus carrying Judas, Monda reveals.
“There is no need for words to comment on this scene, which is powerful, it is precisely true for the believer,” Monda comments. «The crucified Christ embraces Judas after having removed him from the tree in which he committed suicide».
Was Judas saved?
Sources close to the Vatican told Church Militant that Andrea Monda was simply restating the theology of Pope Francis, “who has been seeking to rehabilitate Judas under the rubric of ‘mercy,’ a leitmotiv of Francis’ pontificate.”
In 2016, Francisco speculated: “Perhaps if he had met the Virgin Mary, things would have turned out differently, but the poor man leaves, he does not find a way out of his situation and he went to hang himself.”
«I do not affirm that Judas is in heaven and is saved. But I do not claim otherwise,” Francis told Die Zeit in 2017.
On Wednesday of Holy Week 2020, Francis suggested again that Judas could have been forgiven:
“How did Judas end up? I don’t know”, Francis asked, quoting Jesus: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed, better for that man if he had never been born!”
“Does this mean that Judas is in hell? I do not know. I look at the Gospel and he calls him ‘friend’ and kisses him,” the pope said.
The irony of Jesus with Judas?
Catholic New Testament scholar Raymond Brown in The Death of the Messiah explains that Jesus is using irony. There is irony in Judas greeting Jesus with a kiss and saying, “Hail, Rabbi!” Jesus responds with equal irony: “Friend, do what you came here to do.”
Jesus also does not use the word for a close friend, that is, philos. Instead, he calls Judas hetairos, comrade or colleague, a term used exclusively by Matthew and always used negatively.
Furthermore, Biblical scholars point out that Judas is unrepentant since Matthew uses the Greek verb metameslesthai, not metanoia, to describe Judas’ “remorse” or “repentance.” This verb is very occasionally translated as “repent.”
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