Nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe’s colonial conquests, the Vatican repudiated those decrees on Thursday, saying the “Doctrine of Discovery” that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people’s culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith.

The doctrine was invoked as a legal and religious standing by Europeans who “discovered” new lands and violently seized it from people who had been living there for generations. It has been cited in different arenas for centuries, including by the U.S. Supreme Court — as early as 1823 and as recently as 2005.

“The statement repudiates the very mindsets and worldview that gave rise to the original papal bulls,” the Rev. David McCallum, executive director of the Program for Discerning Leadership based in Rome, told NPR.

[Yeah, but … ]

Scholars widely note three bulls: Pope Nicholas V’s Dum diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455); and Pope Alexander VI’s Inter caetera (1493).

The papal bulls “were not considered valid just 30 to 40 years after they were first issued. They were in fact abrogated legally and nullified by the Vatican by the late 1530s,” McCallum told NPR.

[So in other words, this is a strictly rhetorical act. The Catholic Church had already nullified these almost 500 years ago, likely in response to the conflicts that it set off and the industrial-level slavery industry it generated. At any rate, the Vatican hasn’t backed this “doctrine” since Henry VIII, and it repudiated it long before the colonies in America, let alone the founding of the United States. Those policy and judicial decisions are on us, not the Vatican. — Ed]