Vatican repudiates Doctrine of Discovery following decades of demands from Indigenous people

The Vatican on Thursday formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, the theories backed by 15th-century papal bulls that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Indigenous lands and form the basis of some property law today.

A Vatican statement said the 15th-century papal bulls, or decrees, "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples" and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.

It said the documents had been "manipulated" for political purposes by colonial powers "to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities."

The statement, from the Vatican's development and education offices, 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 demands from Indigenous people 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 an 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.

It was cited as recently as a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the Oneida Indian Nation written by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

During Pope Francis's 2022 visit to Canada, during which he apologized to Indigenous peoples for the residential school system that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes, he was met with demands for a formal repudiation of the papal bulls.

Two Indigenous women unfurled a banner at the altar of the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré on July 29 that read, "Rescind the Doctrine," in bright red and black letters. The protesters were escorted away and the Mass proceeded without incident, though the women later marched the banner out of the basilica and draped it on the railing.

In the statement, the Vatican said: "In no uncertain terms, the Church's magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being. The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political 'Doctrine of Discovery.'"

Ghislain Picard, a longtime Innu leader and the chief of the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador, said the news was a welcome development.

"Many of those pioneers and those who were involved in that work in the last 25 years must be applauding this development," he said. 

But Picard says the move is mostly symbolic and it's to be seen if it will affect policy in Canada.

"The Vatican seems to be washing its hands of its role in the whole colonization of our lands and to me it would be so simple to just accept the fact that they played a role," he said.