ST-ANNE-DE-BEAUPRÉ, Quebec — Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Thursday at Canada’s national shrine and came face-to-face with a long-standing demand from Indigenous peoples: to rescind the papal decrees underpinning the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery” and repudiate the theories that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property law today.
Right before Mass began, two Indigenous women unfurled a banner at the altar of the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré that read: “Rescind the Doctrine” in bright red and black letters. The protesters were escorted away and the Mass proceeded without incident, though the women later marched the banner out of the basilica and draped it on the railing.
The brief protest underscored one of the issues facing the Holy See following Francis’ historic apology for the Catholic Church’s involvement in Canada’s notorious residential schools, where generations of Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their families and cultures to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society. Francis has spent the week in Canada seeking to atone for the legacy and on Thursday added a request for forgiveness from victims for the “evil” of clergy sexual abuse.
Indigenous peoples have called on Francis to formally rescind the 15th century papal bulls, or decrees, that provided the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms the religious backing to expand their territories in Africa and the Americas for the sake of spreading Christianity. Those decrees underpin the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal concept coined in a 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that has come to be understood that ownership and sovereignty over land passed to Europeans because they “discovered” it. It was cited in a 2005 Supreme Court decision involving the Oneida Indian Nation.
