"His Holiness, Pope John Paul II,

In a special message to American Indians in Santa Domingo on October 13, 1992, you observed that it is impossible to forget “the enormous sufferings” of the Indian peoples during the “conquest and colonization” of Americas. You also pledged that the church will work to defend Indian rights. We applaud your statement, for it was the important step toward healing and the restoration of Native spiritual traditions.

Five hundred years ago, your predecessor, Pope Alexander VI, issued the now famous Inter Caetera bull. That papal decree expressed the pope’s desire that “barbarous nations,” those “discovered,” be “subjugated” and reduced to the Catholic faith and Christian religion. He said that in this way, the “Christian empire” would be propagated. The Inter Caetera bull was in direct line with an earlier bull issued in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal, which called upon the king, “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans, whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ.” Pope Nicholas also directed Alfonso to take away and convert the non-Christians’ possessions and property,” and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

Now in 1993, the “International Year of the World’s Indigenous People,” as declared by the United Nations, our spiritual elders tell us that it is time for the Age of Subjugation to end. During that age, the traditional nations and peoples of the Western Hemisphere have endured what historian David Stannard has referred to as the worst holocaust in the history of humanity. For many of us it still continues. It is now time to acknowledge that the papal documents mentioned above directly contributed to our suffering, misery, and to the genocide committed against us."

Get the Story:
Steven Newcomb: A 1993 Open Letter to Pope John Paul II (Indian Country Today 10/18)

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