CANADA
Blackburn News

By The Canadian Press on February 10, 2015

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is weighing whether to ask the Vatican to repeal the Papal Bulls of Discovery that granted 15th-century explorers the right to conquer the New World and the “heathen” aboriginals that called it home.

Chair Murray Sinclair says the commission examining the impact of Canada’s Indian residential schools is looking carefully at the 1455 and 1493 Catholic edicts as part of its final report.

Many argue the proclamations legitimized the treatment of aboriginal people as “less than human.” Crown sovereignty in Canada can be traced back to those papal bulls and neither Canada nor the United States has repudiated them, Sinclair said.

“The movement to repudiation is very strong and is moving ahead,” Sinclair said in an interview. “If we as the commission are going to join that movement or endorse it … we…