One Big Push: Vatican Denounces Doctrine of Discovery

[Amo Husserl]

Vatican rejects Doctrine of Discovery, a move Indigenous people have long urged

The Vatican has formally denounced a 15th-century doctrine used to legitimize the seizure of Indigenous land, but the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says the Roman Catholic Church should go further to repair the harm caused by the decrees.

www.cp24.com

The Vatican has formally denounced a 15th-century doctrine used to legitimize the seizure of Indigenous land, but the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says the Roman Catholic Church should go further to repair the harm caused by the decrees.

A statement from the Vatican on Thursday said the papal bulls used as the basis for the Doctrine of Discovery “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples.”

The papal bulls were connected to the idea that lands being colonized were empty, when in fact Indigenous people had long called them home.

Vatican rejects doctrine that fueled centuries of colonialism

The Vatican has formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery.” That is the theory backed by 15th century papal bulls that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property law today. Indigenous groups have been demanding such a statement for decades.

apnews.com

On Thursday, these Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement as a first good step, even though it didn’t address the rescinding of the bulls themselves and continued to take distance from acknowledging actual Vatican culpability in abuses. The statement said the papal documents had been “manipulated” for political purposes by competing colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities.”

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It said it was right to “recognize these errors,” acknowledge the terrible effects of colonial-era assimilation policies on Indigenous peoples and ask for their forgiveness.

The statement was a response to decades of Indigenous demands for the Vatican to formally rescind the papal bulls that provided the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms the religious backing to expand their territories in Africa and the Americas for the sake of spreading Christianity.

Those decrees underpin the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a legal concept coined in a 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that has come to be understood as meaning that ownership and sovereignty over land passed to Europeans because they “discovered” it.

 

[Afro]

Shame they have very little respect these days or this would have been much much bigger.

 

[Amo Husserl]

Shame they have very little respect these days or this would have been much much bigger.

I'm all for everyone getting a happy resolution, and I'm glad the Indigenous are getting theirs as they should and I don't want to take away from the moment, but Africans people were also affected by that doctrine. If a reparations package comes for the Africans enslaved in the Americas, some should come from the Vatican. I hope the Indigenous peoples get theirs too.

Used to read about all those papal bulls and how it opened up the door for colonization, if the Indigenous can do it so can we. This is an inspiring story.

@get these nets