After years of pressure and following up on Pope Francis’s 2022 visit to Canada, the Vatican issued a statement on March 30 repudiating the 15th-century concepts known as the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which were used to rationalize colonization. Recent Bridgefolk conferences have examined the “Doctrine of Discovery” as part of mutual learning that Mennonites and Catholics in the grassroots movement for dialogue and unity believe necessary in order to strengthen just peacemaking practices in both traditions, and in both the United States and Canada.
As the US-based National Catholic Reporter reports in an article by its Vatican reporter Christopher White,
“In no uncertain terms, the Church’s magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being,” states a two-page text released jointly by the Vatican’s Dicasteries for Culture and Education and Promoting Integral Human Development. “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.’ ”
The declaration acknowledges that some scholars believe the basis of the doctrine is rooted in papal documents, but states that the bulls were “written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, [and] have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”
At the same time, it states that the papal bulls “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples” and that the they 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 Vatican statement has been a leading news story in Canada, reports Bridgefolk board member Gilbert Detillieux of Winnipeg. According to the CBC, indigenous leaders have welcomed the news, though with warnings that the statement will remain symbolic unless it leads to further concrete action by the Church, and by the governments on both sides of the border that converted the “Doctrine of Discovery” into the policies, laws, and court rulings that stripped indigenous peoples of their lands and led to the assimilationist efforts and abuses of residential schools.
Catholic conferences of bishops in both Canada and the United States have expressed support for the repudiation.
