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PHOTOGRAPH BY NAWROCKI, CLASSICSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
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For centuries, European monarchs used a 1493 Vatican decree to brutally colonize Native Americans. In Canada, more than 100,000 First Nations children were forced to attend residential schools that stripped them of their Indigenous identities and attempted to convert them to Christianity.
Indigenous communities are asking Pope Francis, visiting Canada this week, to do more than apologize for abuses of their people under Catholic authorities. They want Francis to revoke the church’s hated Doctrine of Discovery, already repudiated by the United Church of Christ and branches of the Methodist, Episcopal, and Mennonite churches.
“These religious ideas became the foundational building blocks of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny that we are dealing with today,” wrote Syracuse University religion professor Philip Arnold.
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