(RNS) — In late March of this year, the Vatican formally — and somewhat surprisingly — repudiated the centuries-old “Doctrine of Discovery,” based on papal dictates of the 15th century that justified ...

A series of 15th- and 16th-century papal edicts continues to shape policies that include land usage and mineral extraction across the globe and undergird notions of white supremacy and religious ...

What’s at the crux of the Doctrine of Discovery? For hundreds of years Indigenous peoples have suffered the effects of the so-called Doctrine of Discovery, a principle of international law and based ...

What are the responsibilities of the Catholic Church when considering the historical realities of settler colonialism in what we now call the Americas? This question lies at the heart of recent ...

“I was the witness of sufferings which I have not the power to portray,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America after seeing Choctaw nationals cross the Mississippi River into Arkansas on ...

Nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe's colonial conquests, the Vatican repudiated those decrees on Thursday, saying the "Doctrine of Discovery" that was used to justify ...

Apologies from Pope Francis for the Catholic Church's violence and abuse against Indigenous people in Canada during a visit in 2022 fell short in the eyes of prominent Indigenous advocates. Will his ...

ROME – Though it was, in a sense, 530 years in the making, required two separate departments of the Roman Curia to address, and came a full eight months after demands burst into full public view ...

Lionizing Columbus celebrates the setting of the colonizer’s moral compass with European Christian supremacy as due north.

Dave Pasinski, of Fayetteville, has graduate degrees in moral theology and divinity. Some may wonder about the fuss over 500-year-old documents comprising the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery” and why ...