VATICAN CITY – The Vatican this Thursday rejected the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery,” which has ruled the colonization of America and Africa since March 15.
“The ‘doctrine of discovery’ is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” defended a joint statement by the Dicastery (Vatican Ministry) of Culture and Education and the Integral Human Development Service.
With this document, the Holy See denies the teaching that, since the end of the 15th century, with several papal bulls, laid the foundation for the conquest of America and Africa “in the name of God” by powers such as the Spanish or the Portuguese
For example, Pope Nicholas V, in his bull Dum Diversas (1452), gave the Portuguese crown “full and free permission” to “capture and subjugate Saracens and pagans” in its African expansion.
While Pope Alejandro VI. Borgia, with his bull “Inter Caetera” (1493), blessed the arrival of the Spaniards in America a year after Christopher Columbus’ first voyage and fixed the disputed distribution of domains between Castile and Portugal.
These texts of the Popes, authentic supranational authorities in the Age of Discovery, together with the principle of “Terra nullius” (no man’s land), generated a legal concept that protected colonization, “the exclusive right to extinguish the title or possession of these lands by the indigenous Population”.
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During his trip to Canada last July, Quebec’s indigenous groups demanded that Pope Francis, the first Latin American in history, abandon the doctrine that the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs “remains current”.
The Holy See opposed this colonization, acknowledging that these papal bulls “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples,” although apologizing that they had been “manipulated” by the colonial powers.
“The Church is also aware of the fact that the content of these documents has been manipulated by competing colonial powers for political ends to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples, sometimes carried out without opposition by Church authorities,” the text reads.
The Vatican departments declared that “it is fair to recognize these mistakes, to recognize the terrible effects of the policies of assimilation and the pain that the indigenous people are suffering, and to ask for forgiveness”, as Francis has done.
The prefect of the Ministry of Culture and Education, Portuguese Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendoça, stressed that this doctrine “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church” and is “rejected” with this new document.
But he defended “the need to be ever more vigilant in defending the dignity of all human beings and growing in knowledge and appreciation of their own cultures”.
The note asserts that the Church’s Magisterium “unequivocally upholds respect due to every human being” and “rejects concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples.”