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A body does not usually argue with its own founding documents. The atlas records Roman Catholicism doing exactly that, formally, about three bulls the papacy itself issued in the fifteenth century.

Three Bulls That Licensed Conquest

Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex, and Inter Caetera were issued between 1452 and 1493 and became, between them, the textual basis of what later scholarship calls the doctrine of discovery: the idea that a Christian power could claim lands and subordinate the people already living on them simply by arriving first. Romanus Pontifex granted the widest of the three claims, and its reasoning was later cited in courts far removed from the church that wrote it.

The 2023 Repudiation

In 2023 the Holy See issued a joint statement repudiating the concept of discovery these bulls were used to support, stating plainly that they were never expressions of the Catholic faith and that their reasoning had been manipulated for political purposes by colonial powers. The atlas records the church's stance toward each of the three documents as an argument against them, not a claim that they were never issued and not a denial that they carry papal authority. Rome is not disowning the bulls. It is disowning what they were made to justify, more than four centuries after the fact.

Where To Read More

• Roman CatholicismChristianityThe body recorded arguing against three documents it issued itself
• Dum DiversasPapal BullsOne of the three bulls named in the 2023 repudiation
• Romanus PontifexPapal BullsThe widest of the three grants, also named in the repudiation
• Inter CaeteraPapal BullsThe third bull named in the 2023 repudiation