Should the Pope reverse a 500-year-old Church law?

As part of our picks of the top stories of 2022, we are re-airing this episode on the Pope’s visit to Canada and the Doctrine of Discovery, which originally aired on July 25.

Many Indigenous people would like the Pope to publicly renounce the Doctrine of Discovery. Bruce McIvor is one of them. He is a lawyer, a historian and the author of Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It. He explains what this doctrine is, how it went from a papal edict to a legal principle in Canada and why renouncing it would be a meaningful action for the Pope to take on his July visit to Canada.

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