On May 4, 1493, just a year after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter Caetera, which announced that any land not inhabited by Christians was open to be “discovered by Christian rulers” and that the “Catholic faith and Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for, and that the barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to faith itself.” This document, which enacted what would come to be known as the Doctrine of Discovery, was foundational to European colonization of the
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