By George Conger, Anglican Ink.
God has not abandoned the Jewish people, and Jesus Christ remains their Saviour: the Vatican’s new interfaith statement insists that Christians must hold both convictions together, however difficult the fit may seem. Published on 16 Sept 2026 with Pope Leo XIV’s approval, the A Journey of Hope rejects both a revoked Jewish covenant and separate Jewish and Christian roads to redemption.
That leaves a question with consequences far beyond interfaith conferences. Can Christ save someone who does not confess him? And if the answer is yes, what should Christians say to their Jewish neighbours?
For Anglicans, the argument will sound familiar. The difficulty is not finding Anglican voices that agree with Rome, but deciding which Anglican voices to hear. The new statement shares the historic Anglican confession of Christ’s unique saving work; its understanding of how that work reaches non-Christians is considerably more contentious.
A covenant that has not expired
Issued jointly by the Vatican departments responsible for doctrine, Christian unity and interreligious dialogue, A Journey of Hope reviews sixty years of Catholic engagement following Vatican II’s declaration Nostra Aetate. Its most arresting claim is not simply that Christians should respect Jews, but that contemporary Jewish religious life can enrich Christian faith because God continues to work among the people of the covenant.
The foundation is biblical rather than diplomatic: Paul’s account of Israel in Romans 9–11, God’s irrevocable gifts and calling, and the Jewish identity of Jesus himself. The note even recruits a Protestant witness, the Reformed theologian Karl Barth, citing his insistence that the Word became “Jewish flesh”. Jesus’ Jewishness is not a biographical detail Christianity can outgrow.
Yet the document refuses the apparently convenient solution of two independent covenants offering two independent routes to God: “Christ is the one and only Redeemer”. Its argument is not that Jews need no Savior. It is that God’s fidelity to Israel and Christ’s universal saving work cannot finally contradict one another.