Kinlore
1492 – c. 1900

Missions and empire: Catholicism goes global

Riding the ships of Spanish, Portuguese and later French empires, missionaries carry Catholicism to the Americas, Africa and Asia, at once protecting and taking part in conquest.

  • Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 — J. H. Elliott, Yale University Press (2006)
  • A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)
  • Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries — D. A. Brading, Cambridge University Press (2001)
  • Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report — Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015)
  • Joint Statement of the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development on the "Doctrine of Discovery" — Holy See Press Office, Holy See (2023)

Well established empirefaithmission

In 1493 Pope Alexander VI’s bull Inter caetera divided newly “discovered” lands between Spain and Portugal, on condition that their peoples be evangelised. Conquest and mission advanced together. In the Americas, war, forced labour and, above all, European diseases killed a huge share of the Indigenous population. Some clergy protested from the start: in 1511 the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos denounced Spanish settlers on Hispaniola, and Bartolomé de las Casas spent fifty years campaigning against their cruelty. In 1537 Pope Paul III declared that Indigenous peoples were fully human and must not be enslaved, though the ruling was widely ignored.

  • Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 — J. H. Elliott, Yale University Press (2006)
  • A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)

In Mexico, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who tradition says appeared to an Indigenous man, Juan Diego, in 1531, became the heart of a mestizo Catholicism; Guadalupe’s basilica is among the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.

  • Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries — D. A. Brading, Cambridge University Press (2001)
In Asia, Jesuits such as Francis Xavier in India and Japan and Matteo Ricci in China tried to adapt Christianity to local cultures. The Philippines became Asia’s great Catholic nation. In Africa, mass conversion came mostly with nineteenth- and twentieth-century missions under colonial rule.
  • A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)

The darker legacy has come into focus. Church bodies took part in the slave trade and owned enslaved people, and in Canada Catholic entities ran most of the government’s residential schools, where Indigenous children were separated from families and many suffered abuse. In July 2022 Pope Francis apologised in Canada, and in March 2023 the Vatican formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery” used to justify colonial seizure of land.

How it's seen
Catholic missionary memory

Missionaries brought the gospel, schools and hospitals to the world, often at the cost of their own lives, and many defended Indigenous peoples against colonists. Faith took deep, local roots, as in the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.

  • Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries — D. A. Brading, Cambridge University Press (2001)
  • A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2009)

Indigenous and critical views

Mission was inseparable from conquest. Papal bulls blessed colonial claims, church institutions owned enslaved people, and missions and residential schools suppressed Indigenous languages, religions and families. Apologies are welcome but must be matched by restitution and truth-telling.

Why it matters today

Catholicism

This era is why most Catholics today live in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and why the church is the most global institution on earth. It is also the root of some of the church's deepest reckonings: with conquest, slavery and the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, for which Pope Francis apologised in Bolivia in 2015 and in Canada in 2022.