Vatican denounces colonialism's 'Doctrine of Discovery'.
The Vatican has rejected the "Doctrine of Discovery," a 15th-century concept used to justify European Christian colonialists' seizure of Indigenous lands in Africa and the Americas. The papal bulls 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." Indigenous leaders and community advocates had urged the Catholic Church to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, which stated that European colonialists could claim any territory not yet "discovered" by Christians.