Bishop Barron proposes Judas Iscariot did not go to hell

(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Barron published an article advocating for the view that Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus Christ, is not in hell.

On March 29, Barron’s article, entitled “Even Judas? Rethinking sin, despair and divine mercy this Palm Sunday,” appeared on the Fox News website. While acknowledging that Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and “most theologians” have believed Judas went to hell either for betraying Christ or for self-murder, Barron presented a “counter-view”: a 12th century carving apparently showing the Good Shepherd carrying the dead Judas over his shoulders.

“Pope Francis was so fond of this image that he had a reproduction of it over his desk in his papal office. It showed, for him, the hope that even Judas might have been saved by the overwhelming mercy of the Lord,” Barron wrote.

The bishop asked readers not to send him letters, as he knows “that we cannot embrace a simple-minded universalism, which says that we are perfectly confident that all people will be saved. We do indeed have to admit to the very real possibility of an eternal rejection of God.” The rest of Barron’s article focuses on the topic of people who commit suicide and how we need not despair for them but “pray for them and commend them to God’s mercy” instead.

Barron’s initial argument for the possibility that Judas has been spared damnation was his clear contrition, as witnessed by the Gospel of Matthew. However, the bishop does not address the fact that the Gospel does not state that Judas repented of his despair.

In response to Barron’s article, pundit Matt Gaspers pointed out that the traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, found in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, is that Judas “lost soul and body.”

Respectfully, Your Excellency, the Roman Catechism teaches that Judas “lost soul and body” (full quote below), not to mention Our Lord’s own words: “The Son of man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for…

— Matt Gaspers (@MattGaspers) March 30, 2026

Canon lawyer Ed Peters observed, “Acknowledgment of having sinned, and repentance for having sinned, are two different things.”

Acknowledgment of having sinned, and repentance for having sinned, are two different things.

— Edward Peters (@canonlaw) March 30, 2026

Barron has previously faced criticism for suggesting that hell may be empty, a theological speculation popularised by theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in his 1988 work Dare We Hope ‘That All Men Be Saved’? 

Barron also scandalized faithful Catholics by describing Jesus as the “privileged route” – rather than the only way (Acts 4:12) – to salvation, praising a book by notorious LGBT activist Father James Martin, S.J., and telling a “married” homosexual commentator that he would not seek to reverse homosexual “marriage,” among other incidents.

“I don’t think I want to press it further,” Barron told Dave Rubin about homosexual “marriage” in a 2017 interview. “I think it would probably cause much more problems and dissension and difficulty if we keep pressing it.”