Joint Statement on the “Doctrine of Discovery”
A statement by two departments of the Roman Curia declaring that the “doctrine of discovery” is not part of Catholic teaching and that the church repudiates concepts that fail to recognise the rights of indigenous peoples.
The statement has nine numbered paragraphs. It says that the legal idea of “discovery” was debated by colonial powers from the sixteenth century, that some scholars trace it to the bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493), and that these documents were never regarded as expressions of the Catholic faith. It acknowledges that the bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples and that their contents were manipulated by colonial powers to justify immoral acts, sometimes without opposition from church authorities.
It is cited in Christianity Crosses the Atlantic as the Catholic Church’s own present judgment on the use made of the bulls of 1493.
Cited in
- 1493, firm date