The author’s little-remembered fictitious account of Judas Iscariot coincided with the beginning of increasing attempts to rehabilitate or show sympathy for the betrayer of Jesus.
The British bestselling author and politician Jeffrey Archer who died on Oct. 5 at age 86 was famous for his gripping novels and a consistent ability to rehabilitate himself after several public falls from grace.
He was less well known for a 2007 novel he co-wrote called The Gospel According to Judas that caused controversy at the Vatican and coincided with the beginning of a trend — later taken up by Pope Francis, L’Osservatore Romano, and most recently Filipino Cardinal Pablo David — to present Judas in a more sympathetic light.
Archer’s version of the story, co-written with Irish biblical scholar Father Francis Moloney, attempted to excuse the betrayer of Jesus by explaining Judas’ motives and offering an invented account of what happened to him after Jesus’ crucifixion. The story was told through a fictional son of Judas, Benjamin Iscariot.
Father Moloney, who died last year at the age of 85, collaborated on the project after Archer had asked Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini if he would recommend an expert on Scripture to guide the project. The agreement was that Archer would write a story accessible to a contemporary audience, while Father Moloney would ensure the story would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew.
Ultimately, The Gospel According to Judas contained material that ran contrary to Church teaching and sparked controversy when it was launched in March 2007 at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (Father Moloney was a visiting professor there), as it gave the impression the Vatican was endorsing the book.
Unlike the inference in The Gospel According to Judas, the Bible does not explicitly name the final destination of Judas’ soul, but instead provides tragic descriptions that have led the vast majority of theologians to conclude that he was eternally lost to hell. The Church Fathers are almost unanimous in affirming Judas’ eternal perdition, a teaching that was stated as “certain” in the Catechism of the Council of Trent.
However, since around the year 2006, increasing attempts have been made to portray the Betrayer Apostle in a sympathetic light and rehabilitate him, usually in order to convey that God’s mercy may be greater than any sin and to assert that there is no conclusive proof that Judas is damned.
Pope Francis repeatedly stressed Christ’s mercy toward Judas while declining to pronounce on Judas’ final destiny. In 2017, he told the German newspaper Die Zeit: “I do not claim that Judas is in heaven and saved. But I do not claim the opposite. … Perhaps he has not pledged forgiveness, but he has repented,” he added.
In 2024, Francis inferred that Judas was forgiven, recalling in a Regina Caeli address that Jesus called Judas “friend” and saying that a “true friend does not abandon you, even when you make mistakes: [H]e corrects you, perhaps he reproaches you, but he forgives you and does not abandon you.”
Pope Francis kept a photograph behind his desk of a medieval stone carving in the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene in Vézelay, France, which contains two faces, one purportedly of Judas after his hanging and another showing a figure carrying the body over his shoulders. Francis interpreted the figure as Christ the Good Shepherd carrying Judas, the lost sheep, although in 2016 critics cast doubt on this interpretation of the carving.
During Francis’ pontificate, other decisions were taken that favored some kind of rehabilitation or expression of sympathy. On April 1, 2021, L’Osservatore Romano republished Father Primo Mazzolari’s controversial 1958 Holy Thursday homily, presenting Judas as “our brother.” The Italian priest and pacifist speculated that the Lord received Judas “among his own in the afterlife,” showing the “greatness of his mercy.” Around the same time, L’Osservatore Romano published a modern painting by an anonymous French artist that it said Francis displayed in his office. The image was of Jesus, naked and just risen, kissing Judas after removing him from the tree on which he had hanged himself.
Other Church leaders also echoed Francis’ sentiments. They have included Cardinal David of Kalookan, Philippines, whom Pope Francis elevated to cardinal in 2024. He has publicly tried to defend and rehabilitate Judas, arguing that he repented and attempted to return the money he had taken to betray Jesus. Cardinal David interpreted the scriptural phrase “Satan had entered into Judas” as suggesting that Judas was not himself during the betrayal. The cardinal said he made the comments because he wished to draw attention to an un-Christian “condemnatory attitude.”
Writing in the Register in 2021 in response to the publication of Father Mazzolari’s article, Msgr. Charles Pope noted that to many modern readers, Judas is seen as “something of a sympathetic character” due to “our (rather flawed) moral reasoning — reasoning that places exaggerated emphasis on subjective issues (such as intentions and feelings) and almost no emphasis on the objective morality of the act itself.”
He stressed that Judas’ contrition was not directed to God but was actually a “subset of pride or fear” that did not lead him back to Christ and salvation and did not remove his regret but led to despair. It was a “worldly sorrow,” Msgr. Pope said, adding that “Judas is at best a puzzling personality, but at worst he is a tragic figure who exemplifies what the Lord says of those who reject his truth and mercy: ‘Better he had never been born.’”
Archer, a self-described nonbeliever and former peer in the House of Lords, invented plots that often encompassed rivalry, inheritance and sin, or moral conflict, and had titles that often derived from Scripture: Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter, and his last book published this year, Adam and Eve — the names also of his two children.
He wrote The Gospel According to Judas just a few years after having served a two-year jail sentence for perjury. An obituary in The Guardian newspaper speculated that the subject of Judas likely appealed to him because he “hoped for a similar rehabilitation.” Archer’s life was filled with successive falls from grace followed by unexpected comebacks.
Perhaps it may be hoped that, before the end of his earthly life, Archer made the ultimate recovery and found Christ, whom Judas failed to seek — not an author of sentimental acquittals, but the merciful judge who offers forgiveness to the penitent sinner who turns to Him.
