The Vatican has rejected the “Doctrine of Discovery”, a concept that was laid out in the 15th century in so-called “papal bulls” and was used to justify European Christian colonialists’ seizure of Indigenous lands in Africa and the Americas. The theory, which still informs government policies and laws today, was not part of the Catholic Church’s teachings, according to a statement issued by the Vatican’s development and education office on Thursday. The papal bulls were “manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities”. The statement went on to say that “the Church’s magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being” and therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognise the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’.”
Indigenous leaders and community advocates have been urging the Catholic Church to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery for decades. The doctrine stated that European colonialists could claim any territory not yet “discovered” by Christians. The papal bulls played a key role in the European conquest of Africa and the Americas, and their effects are still felt by Indigenous people. Calls to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery grew louder last year when Pope Francis made a trip to Canada during which he apologised for the Catholic Church’s role in widespread abuses that took place at so-called residential schools.
Between the late 1800s and 1990s, more than 150,000 Inuit, First Nation and Metis children across Canada were taken from their families and communities and obligated to attend the forced-assimilation institutions, which were rife with physical, psychological and sexual violence. The Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee said at the time of the pope’s residential school apology that more action was needed from the church – notably, the revocation of the papal bulls.
Indigenous leaders welcomed Thursday’s Vatican statement, even though it continued to take some distance from acknowledging actual culpability. Phil Fontaine, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada who was part of the delegation that met with Pope Francis at the Vatican before last year’s trip and then accompanied him throughout, said the statement was “wonderful”. He said it resolved an outstanding issue and now put the matter to civil authorities to revise property laws that cite the doctrine.
The Doctrine of Discovery was cited as recently as a 2005 US Supreme Court decision involving the Oneida Indian Nation and written by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On Thursday, the Vatican offered no evidence that the three papal bulls (Dum Diversas in 1452, Romanus Pontifex in 1455 and Inter Caetera in 1493) had themselves been formally abrogated, rescinded or rejected, as Vatican officials have often said. But it cited a subsequent bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, that reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples should not be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and were not to be enslaved.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Canadian Jesuit whose office co-authored the statement, stressed that the original bulls had long ago been abrogated and that the use of the term “doctrine” — which in this case is a legal term, not a religious one — had led to centuries of confusion about the church’s role. He stressed that the statement was not just about setting the historical record straight, but “to discover, identify, analyse and try to overcome what we can only call the enduring effects of colonialism today”.
Michele Audette, an Innu senator who was one of the five commissioners responsible for conducting the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the announcement left her in disbelief. She said in an interview on CBC Daybreak that “that doctrine made sure we did not exist or were even recognised … It’s one of the root causes of why the relationship is so broken.”