On March 30, 2023, the Catholic Church took a momentous step by formally repudiating the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a set of colonial-era theories backed by 15th-century papal bulls that legitimized European seizure of Indigenous lands and the subjugation of native peoples. This announcement, issued jointly by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, represented a watershed moment in the Church’s reckoning with its role in centuries of colonization, even as Indigenous leaders and legal experts emphasized that symbolic gestures must be followed by substantive legal and policy changes.
The repudiation came eight months after Pope Francis’s historic visit to Canada in July 2022, during which he apologized to Indigenous peoples for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system that forcibly removed Native children from their families. During that visit, Indigenous protesters unfurled a banner at a papal Mass reading “Rescind the Doctrine” in bright red letters, intensifying decades-old demands for the Vatican to formally disavow the theological underpinnings of colonial conquest. The Vatican’s statement declared that “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.'”
Historical Origins and Impact of the Doctrine
The Doctrine of Discovery emerged from a series of papal bulls issued during the 15th century as European powers embarked on colonial expansion. These decrees provided both legal and religious justification for Christian monarchs to claim sovereignty over lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples. Three papal bulls became particularly notorious: Pope Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera (1493).
The 1452 bull Dum Diversas authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to “invade, search out, capture and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be” and “to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.” This decree facilitated the Portuguese slave trade from West Africa and established a theological framework that treated non-Christian peoples as objects to be conquered rather than human beings with inherent rights. Three years later, Romanus Pontifex extended these principles, granting Portugal dominion over “discovered” lands and encouraging the enslavement of native peoples in Africa and what Europeans called the “New World.”
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Caetera, which established that one Christian nation could not claim dominion over lands previously dominated by another Christian nation, thereby creating the foundation for European powers to divide the world among themselves. These bulls embodied what scholars describe as a “mindset of cultural or racial superiority” that allowed for the objectification and subjection of entire populations. As historian Wilhelm Grewe noted, Dum Diversas was essentially “geographically unlimited” in its application, making it perhaps the most significant papal act relating to colonization.
The doctrine’s influence extended far beyond its immediate historical context. In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly invoked the Doctrine of Discovery in the landmark case Johnson v. M’Intosh, with Chief Justice John Marshall ruling that Indigenous peoples held only a “right of occupancy” to their ancestral lands, while ultimate title belonged to the discovering European power. Marshall wrote that “discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it” and that Indigenous peoples’ “rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished.” This decision became foundational to U.S. federal Indian law and was cited as recently as 2005 in a Supreme Court case involving the Oneida Indian Nation.
Similarly, in Canada, the doctrine underpinned legal frameworks that dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their lands and justified policies of forced assimilation. The concept pervaded Canadian aboriginal rights jurisprudence, with courts relying on what legal scholars call the “assertion of Crown sovereignty” to justify governmental control over Indigenous territories. Professor Tamara Baldhead Pearl of the University of Alberta, who is from One Arrow First Nation, described this as “white supremacy in Canadian case law.”
The Vatican’s Statement and Its Limitations
The March 2023 Vatican statement acknowledged that the papal bulls “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and declared that these documents “have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.” The statement asserted that colonial powers had “manipulated” the bulls “for political purposes” to “justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities.”
Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, emphasized that the repudiation resulted from dialogue with Indigenous communities, stating that it represented “the architecture of reconciliation and also the product of the art of reconciliation, the process whereby people commit to listening to each other, to speaking to each other and to growth in mutual understanding.” The Vatican invoked Pope Francis’s words from his 2022 Canadian visit: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”
However, the Vatican’s repudiation faced significant criticism from Indigenous leaders and legal experts for what it did not do. Most notably, the statement offered no evidence that the three 15th-century papal bulls had been formally abrogated, rescinded, or rejected. Instead, the Vatican cited a 1537 bull, Sublimis Deus, issued by Pope Paul III, which reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples should not be deprived of their liberty or property and should not be enslaved. Yet critics pointed out that Sublimis Deus came 85 years after Dum Diversas and did nothing to prevent centuries of colonization and enslavement that followed.
Michelle Schenandoah of the Oneida Nation, a professor of Indigenous law at Syracuse University, called the statement “another step in the right direction” but noted it did not mention rescinding the bulls themselves. She emphasized that the repudiation “really puts the responsibility on nation states such as the United States, to look at its use of the Doctrine of Discovery” and argued that “it’s time for these governments to take full accountability for their actions.” Steven Newcomb, an Eastern Shawnee legal scholar, expressed even stronger criticism, stating, “They haven’t even begun to come to terms with the true nature of what we’re actually talking about.”
Indigenous Reactions: Hope Tempered by Skepticism
Indigenous leaders and communities responded to the Vatican’s repudiation with a mixture of cautious optimism and frank disappointment. Phil Fontaine, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada who was part of the delegation that met with Francis at the Vatican, called the statement “wonderful” and said it “resolved an outstanding issue.” Father Steve Judd of Maryknoll, who worked for 40 years among Indigenous peoples in Peru and Bolivia, described it as “a huge and welcome development” that “sets in motion for all Christians a road map to true reconciliation.”
However, many Indigenous voices emphasized that the repudiation represented only a beginning, not an end. Er Daniels, former chief of Long Plain Nation in Manitoba, stated, “On the surface it looks good, but there has to be a change in behavior, laws and policies from that statement.” He warned that colonial attitudes toward Indigenous peoples persist globally: “There are still people out there that want to eliminate, exterminate, eradicate Indigenous people.”
Ghislain Picard, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador, welcomed the announcement while acknowledging that its significance might be largely symbolic. The critical question, Indigenous leaders emphasized, was whether the repudiation would translate into concrete changes in law, policy, and the daily lives of Indigenous communities. As Professor Robert Miller of Arizona State University, who is Eastern Shawnee, observed, “What the church did is an important worldwide educational moment, but it doesn’t change the law in any country. It doesn’t change titles to land anywhere.”
This skepticism reflected hard-won experience with declarations that fail to produce substantive change. Ted Kuzan, a residential school survivor, expressed frustration one year after Pope Francis’s 2022 visit to Canada: “I really feel I’ve been used as an individual… Nobody has been in touch with me from the church and it’s rather disappointing.” His experience illustrated the gap between institutional pronouncements and the healing work that Indigenous communities need from the Church.
Legal and Political Implications
The Vatican’s repudiation carries uncertain but potentially significant implications for property law, land rights, and the legal status of Indigenous peoples in countries built on colonial foundations. In the United States and Canada, the Doctrine of Discovery remains embedded in legal precedents that continue to shape aboriginal rights jurisprudence.
The 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh decision established that Indigenous peoples possess only a limited “right of occupancy” rather than full ownership of their ancestral lands. This ruling has been invoked repeatedly over two centuries, creating what legal scholars describe as a foundation of “white supremacy” in property law. Even the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the residential school system, noted that the Doctrine of Discovery formed the basis for policies that led to “cultural genocide.”
Professor Tamara Baldhead Pearl suggested that while the Vatican’s repudiation “may not significantly change things in law,” it will influence “those who make changes in the law, so that we distance ourselves from the Doctrine of Discovery and use the treaties and the nation-to-nation relationship that we had, as confirmed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, as the foundation of our relationship here in Canada.” Kate Gunn of First Peoples Law in Canada described the repudiation as “an important way of beginning to acknowledge the way the Doctrine has been used as a tool to justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands for centuries, and beyond that as a tool for enabling cultural genocide in the form of residential schools.”
The Canadian government responded to the Vatican’s statement with its own declaration that “ancient doctrines such as this have no place in Canadian law and do not define our ongoing relationships with Indigenous Peoples.” Ministers emphasized that Canada’s United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act explicitly states that “all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating the superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences, including the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius, are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable, and socially unjust.” However, critics noted that Canada has not yet enacted specific legislation formally repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery or addressing its ongoing effects in Canadian law.
Legal experts have called for concrete actions to uproot the doctrine’s influence. First Peoples Law proposed that Canada should enact legislation expressly repudiating the Doctrine and “unequivocally confirms that it is no longer open to government representatives to adopt policies or positions which are rooted in the denial of Indigenous rights.” They also recommended convening a national gathering to develop an action plan identifying “concrete steps to be taken to uproot the ongoing pernicious effects of the Doctrine.”
The Broader Context of Church Accountability
The Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery must be understood within the larger context of Pope Francis’s efforts to address the Catholic Church’s historical wrongs against Indigenous peoples. In July 2022, Francis traveled to Canada on what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” to meet with survivors of the residential school system. At Maskwacis, Alberta, he delivered an emotional apology, saying in Spanish, “I am very sorry,” and declaring, “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”
The residential schools, which operated from the 19th century until the 1970s, forcibly removed approximately 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and communities. Most were run by the Catholic Church under government contract as part of a policy designed to assimilate Indigenous children into Christian Canadian culture. A 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report concluded that the schools constituted “cultural genocide,” with children subjected to widespread physical and sexual abuse and forbidden from speaking their languages or practicing their cultures. Officially, 4,120 children died while in the schools’ care, though the actual number is likely far higher and may never be fully known.
The discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites, beginning with 215 children found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021, intensified calls for the Church to reckon with its complicity in colonial violence. These discoveries galvanized Indigenous demands not only for apologies but for the Church to repudiate the theological justifications for colonization.
During his Canadian visit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly challenged the Pope to do more, insisting that “the Catholic Church as an institution bore blame and needed to do more to atone.” Trudeau noted that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission had specifically called for a papal apology delivered on Canadian soil and emphasized that Francis’s visit represented only “a first step.” The Canadian government has apologized for its role in the residential schools and paid billions in reparations to Indigenous communities, while the Catholic Church has paid over $50 million with plans to add $30 million more.
However, Indigenous leaders and survivors emphasized that apologies without structural change ring hollow. Chelsea Brunell, an Indigenous activist who demanded that the Church rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, stated, “Having an apology without action to help the current generations of the residential school survivors and their children is overall inappropriate… We still live in a colonial society and we’re still suffering.”
Other Christian Denominations and Earlier Repudiations
The Catholic Church was notably late in repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery compared to other Christian denominations. The Episcopal Church led the way in 2009, when its 76th General Convention passed a resolution unanimously repudiating the doctrine “as fundamentally opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our understanding of the inherent rights that individuals and peoples have received from God.” The resolution called on the U.S. government to eliminate the doctrine from its policies and urged Queen Elizabeth to publicly repudiate it.
Steven Newcomb, the Indigenous law scholar who helped organize the Episcopal Church’s repudiation, called it “a historic event” and noted that the ultimate goal was to overturn Johnson v. M’Intosh. The Reverend Brad Hauff, the Episcopal Church’s missioner for Indigenous ministries and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, explained that addressing the doctrine’s negative impacts was difficult when “over 50% of the world’s Christians were not on board with it,” making the Vatican’s eventual repudiation “a significant advancement.”
The Canadian Unitarian Council followed in May 2023, just two months after the Vatican’s statement, with delegates voting overwhelmingly to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #49. The Council established a two-year action group to advocate for national legislation formally repudiating the doctrine and to work toward “federal commitment to a policy of restitution and redress.”
The Path Forward: From Repudiation to Reparations
The Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery represents what José Francisco Calí Tzay, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, called “an important step towards reconciliation and healing with Indigenous Peoples.” He commended the Vatican’s recognition of colonization’s harmful effects and welcomed Pope Francis’s call to abandon the colonizing mentality. However, Calí Tzay and other experts emphasized that repudiation must be followed by concrete actions to address the doctrine’s ongoing legacy.
Professor Miller of Arizona State University noted that “repudiation without reparations” leaves the fundamental injustices unaddressed. Indigenous leaders have called for a range of actions, including land restitution, financial reparations, support for Indigenous languages and cultures, and reforms to legal systems that continue to deny Indigenous sovereignty. Andrea Palframan, communications director of RAVEN, a legal defence fund for Indigenous peoples, emphasized that decades of “tremendous activism and tireless work by Indigenous Peoples” produced the Vatican’s statement, making Indigenous activists “the real authors of the denouncement.”
The repudiation also highlighted the need for truth-telling about how the Doctrine of Discovery continues to shape contemporary society. Legal scholars have documented how the doctrine’s principles persist in property rights, resource extraction policies, and governmental authority over Indigenous territories. As Professor Pearl observed, “Pretty much almost all Section 35 of the Constitution Act aboriginal rights cases and jurisprudence are affected by the touch of discovery.” She described the “insidiousness” of how assumptions about Canadian state law being “the only sole legitimate source of law in Canada” erase the reality that “we have multiple legal orders, actually, because Confederation was founded by multiple peoples.”
Some Indigenous leaders called for national gatherings to develop comprehensive action plans for addressing the doctrine’s effects. Others emphasized the importance of education, with the Vatican’s statement serving as what Miller called “an important worldwide educational moment” that could shift public understanding of colonization’s theological foundations. The Canadian government committed to working with Indigenous partners “to develop a Covenant of Reconciliation that specifically addresses the rejection of the Doctrine of Discovery.”
The Vatican’s March 2023 repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery marked a historic acknowledgment of the Catholic Church’s role in providing religious justification for centuries of colonial violence and dispossession. By declaring that concepts failing to recognize Indigenous peoples’ inherent human rights are incompatible with Catholic teaching, the Church took an important symbolic step toward reckoning with its complicity in what many scholars and Indigenous leaders describe as genocide.
However, the response from Indigenous communities made clear that repudiation without substantive change amounts to little more than empty rhetoric. The papal bulls that underpinned the Doctrine of Discovery have not been formally rescinded, and their legal legacy continues to shape property law, governmental authority, and Indigenous rights in countries around the world. As Michelle Schenandoah observed, the repudiation shifts responsibility to nation-states to reform their legal systems and “take full accountability for their actions.”
The path from repudiation to reconciliation requires more than declarations from religious institutions. It demands legal reforms that recognize Indigenous sovereignty, land restitution, reparations for past harms, support for Indigenous cultures and languages, and fundamental changes in how settler colonial societies understand their relationship with Indigenous peoples. As Ted Kuzan’s frustration with the lack of follow-through after Pope Francis’s Canadian visit illustrates, Indigenous communities have grown weary of apologies unaccompanied by action.
Ultimately, the Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery represents what Ghislain Picard called a moment when “all of those Indigenous leaders and those who were involved in this work in the last few years must be applauding this development.” Yet as Chelsea Brunell pointedly stated, “We still live in a colonial society and we’re still suffering.” The measure of the repudiation’s significance will not be found in the Vatican’s words but in whether those words catalyze the legal, political, and social transformations necessary to dismantle the colonial structures the Doctrine of Discovery helped create. As Indigenous peoples have demonstrated through centuries of resistance and advocacy, they will continue demanding not just acknowledgment of past wrongs, but justice in the present and future.
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