Who is to be accountable for over 100 Million deaths and the confiscation

of lands and territories, the elimination of entire tribes, the

dehumanizing of values, cultures and the replacement of indigenous legal
systems that prevailed? It is undoubtedly the Church whose edicts
sanctioned Christian monarchs and explorers to invade, capture, vanquish
and subdue all non-Christians and reduce them to perpetual slavery and
take away all their possessions and property. This capture of already
inhabited lands and territory and taking possession of them simply because
they were non-Christian happened 500 years ago but still continues with
these nations now in debt to the same Western industrialists and
corporates. Should it not be time that 500 year edicts that continue still
be revoked and the Third World nations be given some reprieve by siphoning
off their debt so they could rebuild the lives that the papal bulls were
responsible for?
The Roman Catholic Church issued the following papal edicts that changed
the lives of millions of indigenous natives as well as took away the ethos
of their indigenous lands forever.
-- Terra Nullius in 1095 issued by Pope Urban II at the beginning of the
Crusades giving Kings and Princes of Europe the right to discover or
claim non-Christian areas.
-- Dum Diversas in 1452 War declared against non-Christians, conquests
authorized of their nations and territories, non-Christians declared
uncivilized, subhuman and without rights to land or nation. Christian
leaders claim God-give right to take control of all lands and this idea was
used to justify war, colonization and slavery.
-- Romanus Pontifex in 1455
inter caetera in 1493 this decree gave orders by the Pope to convert
natives of non-Christian lands to Catholicism in order to strengthen the
Christian Empire.
Manifest Destiny in 1845 was just another name for Doctrine of Discovery
promoted by John L OSullivan to defend US expansion and claims to new
territory. The idea was a continuance on the Church notion that whites held
a natural right to expand the nation and spread freedom and democracy.
These were orders granted by the Pope to Portugal to rule the East and
Spain to rule the West giving them the right to invade, capture, vanquish,
subdue, convert and reduce to slavery all lands, territory and people that
were non-Christian.
Thereafter, in 1495 King Henry VI followed the papal edicts and
commissioned explorer John Cabot to claim on behalf of the crown the lands
of heathens and infidels not yet discovered by any Christian people.
This became the foundation of the decision by the US Supreme Court in 1823
in the Johnson v MIntosh case that cited the Cabot charter to justify
America as a Christian discovery and turn Native Indians into landless
people. The Christian Doctrine of Discovery thus was quoted in the US to

deny Native American Indians their land, the doctrine was used to deny
natives land in Canada and repeated in Australia as well.
How ethical and moral is it for lands and territory to be taken away from
people who were living in them for centuries earlier simply because these
lands were not Christian? As a result the lands/territories with
inhabitants in Americas, Africa and Asia were all stolen and a bogus
independence was created after these nations had been pilfered of their
natural assets and resources and the Christian lands built up their nations
with the stolen wealth. Thereafter they began global trade with banking
systems that they controlled leaving countries further impoverished and
unlikely to ever come out of the debt trap.
Ravindra Koul
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