The Vatican has issued a statement which says the “Doctrine of Discovery” – a theory that served to justify the expropriation by sovereign colonizers of indigenous lands from their rightful owners – “is not a part of the teaching of the Catholic Church.” It further affirms that the papal decrees that granted such “rights” to colonizing sovereigns have never been a part of the Church’s Magisterium.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights defines the Doctrine of Discovery as a legal and religious concept that has been used for centuries to justify Christian colonial conquest. It advanced the idea that European peoples, culture and religion were superior to all others.

The statement from the Vatican also says the contents of papal documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”

The Catholic Church ran more than half of the 139 Indian Residential Schools in Canada.

Last September in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations issued a news release where Chief Bobby Cameron asked King Charles III, in his new role, to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery together with the Church of England, and support their calls for the federal government to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.