The Vatican responded to indigenous demands on Thursday by officially repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, theories backed by 15th-century papal bulls that legitimized colonial-era indigenous land grabbing and formed the basis of some current laws on the property.

Papal bulls or decrees from the 15th century “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and were never considered expressions of the Catholic faith, according to a Vatican statement.

The documents, he pointed out, were “manipulated” for political purposes by the colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples which were committed, on occasion, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”

The statement from the Vatican’s offices for development and education said it is necessary to “recognize these errors”, to admit the terrible effects of colonial policies of assimilation of indigenous peoples and to ask for their forgiveness.

The statement responded to decades of indigenous demands for the Vatican to officially rescind papal bulls that provided the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal with religious support to expand their territories in Africa and the Americas under the guise of spreading Christianity.

These executive orders support the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal concept coined in an 1823 United States Supreme Court decision that is interpreted to mean that ownership and sovereignty of the land passed to Europeans because they have “discovered”.

The principle was most recently cited in a 2005 Supreme Court decision regarding the Oneida Indian Nation, authored by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

During Pope Francis’ visit to Canada in 2022, during which he apologized to Indigenous peoples for a boarding system that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes, he uncovered claims that the Church had officially repudiated the papal bulls.

On July 29, two Indigenous women unfurled a banner at the altar of the Santa Ana de Beaupré National Shrine with the words “Repeal the Doctrine” in large red and black letters. The demonstrators were escorted out of the venue and the mass passed without incident, although the women then carried the banner from the basilica and hung it from a balustrade.

In its statement, the Vatican said that “in clear terms, the Magisterium of the Church upholds the respect due to all human beings. The Catholic Church therefore rejects concepts that do not recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what is known as the “legal and political doctrine of discovery”.

The Vatican has provided no evidence that the three 15th-century papal bulls (Dum Diversas in 1452, Romanus Pontifex in 1455, and Inter Caetera in 1493) were officially rejected, rescinded, or abolished, as government officials have often said. Vatican. However, he cited a later bull, Sublimis Deus, of 1537, which reaffirmed that indigenous peoples were not to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and were not to be enslaved.

It is significant that the rejection of the Doctrine of Discovery occurred during the tenure of the first Latin American pope in history. Francisco, who is Argentine, had already apologized before the trip to Canada with the natives of Bolivia in 2015 for the crimes of the colonial conquest of the American continent. Thursday’s decision was made while the pope was hospitalized with a respiratory infection.

Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Vatican’s cultural office, said the statement reflected the Vatican’s dialogue with indigenous peoples.

“This note is part of what we might call the architecture of reconciliation and it is also a product of the art of reconciliation, the process by which people engage in listening to each other, talking with each other and to grow in common understanding,” it said in a statement.