A Vatican statement released on Thursday said some papal bulls or decrees “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoplesand have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.

The declaration was the Vatican’s response to decades of native demands for a formal repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery”, the legal theory upheld by the 15th century “papal bulls” that legitimizes the taking of indigenous lands in the colonial erawhich served as the basis for certain laws which govern property today.

The statement, made by the Vatican’s development and education departments, represents a historic acknowledgment of the Catholic Church’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers.

Although they continue to keep a distance from genuine Vatican advocacy, indigenous leaders welcomed the statement.

The statement said papal decrees were “manipulated” for political purposes by colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were committed, at times, without opposition from church authorities.”

He said it was right to “acknowledge those mistakes”, to recognize the terrible effects of colonial-era assimilation policies on Indigenous peoples and ask for your forgiveness.

The declaration was a response to decades of native demands for the Vatican to officially rescind papal bulls that provided the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain with religious support to expand their territories in Africa and the Americas for the spread of Christianity.

These executive orders support the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a legal concept coined in an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that means the ownership and sovereignty over the land of indigenous peoples passed to Europeans because they were the ones who “discovered” it.

The “Doctrine of Discovery” was recently cited in a 2005 Supreme Court decision involving the Oneida Indian Nation, authored by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“Under the Doctrine of Discovery…the title to the lands occupied by the Indians on the arrival of the settlers passed to the sovereign, first to the discovering European nation, then to the States of origin and to the States United,” Ginsburg wrote in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.

During Pope Francis’ visit to Canada in 2022, where he apologized to Indigenous peoples for the residential school system forcibly removes Indigenous children from their homesmet with demands for formal repudiation of papal bulls.

Two Indigenous women unfurled a banner at the altar of the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré National Shrine on July 29 that read: “Abrogate the Doctrine” in bright red and black letters. The demonstrators were led out of the church and the mass passed without incident, although the women then unfurled the banner outside the basilica.

In the statement, the Vatican said: “In clear terms, the magisterium of the Church upholds the respect due to all human beings. Therefore, the Catholic Church rejects concepts that do not recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoplesincluding the so-called “legal and political doctrine of discovery”.

Phil Fontaine, a former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada who was part of the delegation that met Francis in the Vatican before the trip and then accompanied him throughout the trip, said the statement was ” wonderful,” he said. outstanding issue and now puts the matter in the hands of the civil authorities to review the property laws that cite the doctrine.

“The Holy Father promised that upon his return to Rome, they would begin work on a statement intended to allay the fears and concerns of many survivors and others concerned about the relationship between the Catholic Church and our people. , and he did what he promised to do,” Fontaine told The Associated Press.

“The Church did what the Holy Father said she would do. Now the ball is in the court of the governments of the United States and Canada. Especially that of the United States where doctrine is part of the law,” he said.

The Vatican has provided no evidence that the three papal bulls (Dum Diversas in 1452, Romanus Pontifex in 1455, and Inter Caetera in 1493) had been formally abrogated, revoked, or dismissed, as Vatican officials have often said. But he cites a later bull, Sublimis Deus of 1537, which reaffirms that Indigenous peoples should not be deprived of their freedom or possession of their property, and they should not be enslaved.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Canadian Jesuit whose office co-wrote the statement, said the original bulls had long since been repealed and that the use of the term “doctrine”, which in this case is a legal term and not religious, it had led to centuries of confusion about the role of the church.

The original bulls, he said, “are treated as didactic, magisterial or doctrinal documents, and they constitute an ad hoc political movement. And I think that solemnly repudiating an ad hoc political move would generate more confusion than clarity.

Czerny pointed out that the statement was not only intended to clarify the historical record, but to “to discover, identify, analyze and try to overcome what today can only be called the lasting effects of colonialism”.

The cardinal said it was significant that the repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery” occurred during the pontificate of the first Latin American pope in history. Even before the trip to Canada. The Argentine pope had apologized to the indigenous peoples of Bolivia in 2015 for the crimes of the conquest of the Americas during the colonial era.

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

“This statement is part of what one might call the architecture of reconciliation and also the product of the art of reconciliation, the process by which people engage in listening to each other, talking to each other and growing in mutual understanding,” he said in a statement.