Revocation of the Three Papal Bulls is Consistent with Numerous Statements by Representatives of the Holy See

The Holy See’s support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted on 13 September 2007, was an important act in recognition of the fundamental human rights of Indigenous peoples.

Additionally, in its Periodic Report to CERD (UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) in 2000, representatives of the Holy See strongly affirmed the Church’s commitment to truth, peace and reconciliation.  Certain statements from this review process clearly demonstrate that the Holy See’s public acknowledgement and revocation of the three papal bulls would be consistent with its own stated positions, with its responsibilities as a party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and more generally, under international law.
 

            Such an acknowledgement and revocation would reinforce its own statement that the “Holy See, for its part, is doing all it can towards the advancement of moral principles and the conditions for ensuring peace, justice and social progress in a context of ever more effective respect of human rights.”

            The papal bulls issued to Portuguese monarchs in the fifteenth and sixteenth century instructed Portugal to, “capture, vanquish, and subdue” non-Christians, and to “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”   This resulted in traditional indigenous cultures being negatively impacted, and, to a great extent, destroyed. Such a medieval point of view is at direct odds with the Holy See’s recognition to the CERD Committee that the “path of peace and reconciliation presupposes respect of the human person, without which it is not possible to reconstruct what has been destroyed.”

            In his Universal Prayer of 12 March 2000, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed that “justice and truth must go hand-in-hand,” and acknowledged that “Christians have been guilty of attitudes of rejection and exclusion, consenting to acts of discrimination on the basis of racial and ethnic differences.” Further, he declared “resolve to seek and promote the truth.”

Acknowledgment and revocation of the three papal bulls would be consistent with this resolve.

            The Universal Prayer went further, “Let us pray that … Christians will be able to repent of the words and attitudes caused by pride, by hatred, by the desire to dominate others”  and “Let us pray for all those who have suffered offences against their human dignity and whose rights have been trampled.”

Acknowledgement and revocation by the Holy See of the three papal bulls is a way to actualize this prayer.