Columbian Bishops demand apology from their president
January 29, 2026 at 3:40 PM ET
The Colombian bishops demanded respect for the person of Christ, the true God, after President Gustavo Petro said there may have been a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
In a Jan. 28 statement, the Colombian Bishops’ Conference said that “no official nor other person is called upon to issue theological opinions on the religious or doctrinal convictions of citizens, and, on the contrary, the [civil authorities] have the obligation to protect people in their beliefs and maintain harmonious relations and mutual understanding with religious denominations.”
The bishops’ statement came the day after Petro’s comments during the reopening of the St. John of God Hospital in Bogotá.
Petro suggested that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene “because a man like that couldn’t exist without love. And the woman supported him until the very end; and he didn’t die like Bolívar, he died surrounded by the women who loved him. And there were many of them,” said Petro, who is the first leftist president in Colombia’s history.
The episcopate emphasized that for Christians, the name of Jesus is “holy, and his person holds not only the importance of a historical figure but also demands the respect and adoration given to the true God.”
The bishops recalled that the country’s constitution, Constitutional Court Ruling C-817 of 2011, and Article 4 of Law 133 of 1994 on religious freedom and worship “mandate respect, noninterference, and protection of individuals in their beliefs.”
“We the bishops of Colombia invite everyone to assiduously read the Gospels and review the teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to come to know the unique figure of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” the statement reads.
They also invited those who “have doubts about the person of Jesus, Lord and Messiah, to seek information from the objective sources of the Gospels and to avoid any superficiality in this regard.”
The bishops pointed out that, just as the Church teaches to “respect legitimately constituted authorities and to seek peace,” they ask that “our faith also be respected, as well as our right to profess it and to spread it through witness and teaching.”
