“[…] In what could have been a ground-breaking and historic repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the Vatican instead released a series of political statements that sought to rewrite history,
Catholic Church doctrine was used to justify the world’s largest land grab and the resulting colonialism. It had an outsized role in shaping the United States and other countries of the New World.
No matter how hard the Vatican may try, it seems unlikely that the theological underpinnings of what came to be known as the “doctrine of discovery” can be avoided indefinitely.