Untold Story of Catholic Missions

Church's Actual Missionary History

During the time of Constantine II, who was the emperor of the Roman Empire, in the early 4th century, Christians fell into the hands of pagans, and hunted like prey animals, and many of them were not able to practice their faith in daylight, and if caught, they were slaughtered. Catholic martyrs fought to these genocides.?

When the Arabians controlled most the holy land in Israel, the Catholic Church was responsible for retrieving back the holy lands. Arabians tried to conquer Europe and Islamize these Christian nations. Catholics fought them and won. Despite enduring hardships at the time of the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church did its best to spread the Gospel. Many priests went to Pagan areas and converted numerous non-Christians. Those priests also underwent terrible prosecutions.

If there is any Church that has suffered enormous trials because of faith and love for Christ, it is the Catholic Church. Still today, less educated or less informed people blame Catholics for the Inquisition extremism, which is partially accurate, although they forget that Islamic terrorists began most the slaughtering of innocent Christian travelers to holy sites, and extreme heresies were everywhere, during the first 1500 years of Christian history.

All popes should also remember these historical truths!

Pope Alexander VI in I493 issued a Papal Bull or Decree, “Inter Caetera,” which authorized Spain and Portugal to colonize the Americas and Native peoples. The Inter Caetera?granted Catholic Monarchs?King Ferdinand II of Aragon?and?Queen Isabella I of Castile,?all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100?leagues?west and south of any of the islands of the?Azores?or the?Cape Verde?islands. Differing interpretations have argued that this Bull only meant to transform the possessions and occupation of land into lawful sovereignty. The Spanish Crown and Conquistadors interpreted it in the widest possible sense, deducing that it gave?Spain political sovereignty.?

Dudum Siquidem?issued by the pope also in 1493, which are Bulls of Donation, tried to settle disputes between Spain and?Portugal. However, they did not address the exploratory and colonial ambitions of other nations, which became more of an issue especially after the?Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. By the then migration of Natives throughout South and North America spread various European diseases throughout the Americas to neighboring tribes, including measles, chickenpox, smallpox, diphtheria, influenza, typhoid, and the common cold. This was not intentional; it was an unintended fate of the times.

In 2015, Pope Francis apologized to Indigenous Peoples of America for the Catholic Church’s role in the “brutalities of colonization,” during an encounter in Bolivia, with Indigenous groups, and Evo Morales--Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. Pope Francis said, "I humbly ask forgiveness,?not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the Native peoples during the so-called conquest of America." [St. Pope John Paul II made earlier apologies in 1992 in the Dominican Republic, so why is this pope repeating it.]

Pope Francis stated, “Some may rightly say, ‘when the pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the church. I say this to you with regret: many grave sins were committed against the Native people of America in the name of God,’”

Francis apology was significant given the controversy created in 2007, during the last papal visit, when Pope Benedict XVI said: Indigenous people wanted to be Christianized. "In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture,"?

Doctrine of Discovery was the basis for European land declarations in the Americas as well as for the foundation for the westward expansion of the United States.

Pope Francis criticized the “throwaway” culture of today’s society” during a public mass in Bolivia. "It is a mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable," he said. "This way of thinking has room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are unproductive."

He then called for a “global social movement,” to erase the “new colonialism” which has created materialism, inequality, and exploitation of the poor.”

Pope Francis also delivered a speech in Ecuador calling for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and the people who live there. "Ecuador – together with other countries bordering the Amazon – has an opportunity to become a teacher of integral ecology. We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it, asserting that protecting the environment was not a choice, but a moral duty.”

Question: Why is it vitally important for Pope Francis to echo typically one-way apologies now, including the Canadian Natives in 2022?

We believe Pope Francis’s obsession with “Mother Earth,” “Socialism,’ and his “Novel Morality,” as defined in his Encyclicals and book (which this writer read carefully), “Let Us Dream—The Path to a Better Future,” is the answer,

The?Catholic?Church is the most criticized Christian denomination because it is the largest Christian Church in the entire world. People discriminate against the?Catholic Church?for “bad things” they allegedly did in the Dark Ages, such as prosecutions. One might ask thenselves, why do people remember the Catholic Church for all the bad things they did, but rarely remember all the good things they did?

If truth be told, authentic history reveals that the Catholic Church was primarily responsible for Christianity expansion worldwide, with over two billion baptized Christians in 2022. Centuries ago, prior to the 1500s, every Christian in the world was Catholic. During most of the so-called Dark Ages, Christians experienced many trials, wherein tens-of-?thousands of innocents?lost their lives due to painful prosecutions by Pagans. The Catholic Church endured inhuman treatment and deaths for centuries, and finally they finally fought back by creating Catholic armed forces to fight against numerious heretics and inhuman prosecutions.?

U.S. Missions. The spiritual welfare of the native tribes of?America?was a subject of deep concern of Spain and France?from the very discovery of the Western Continent. To this fact early documents bear’ witness: They granted to Ayllon in 1532, exploration and settlement in Florida. A quote by Shea, is typical: “Whereas our principal intent in the discovery of new lands is that the inhabitants and natives thereof, who are without the light or knowledge of faith, may be brought to understand the truth of our holy?Catholic Faith. … That they may come to a knowledge thereof, and become Christians, be saved, and this is the chief motive that you are to bear and hold in this affair and to this end it is proper that religious persons should accompany you. …

“… Priests and missionaries [shall be with] every Spanish expedition of discovery. The first Mass celebrated within the present limits of the United States, was [to be] that offered up by the priests of Ponce de Leon’s expedition at the southwestern point of?Florida?in 1521. Celebrated by the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos, the earliest opponent of Indian slavery, at Ayllon’s colony San Miguel de Guandape in?Virginia?in 1526, [Eighty years before founding of Jamestown].

Pope Francis might keep his generally one-sided story “balanced” by remembering these missionary heroes.

This is but a brief summary of a number of Catholic Missionaries. There are tens-of-thousands of Catholic Missionaries in the Americas, and in the world, especially in Communist China. My cousin, known as “The Padre of Guadalcanal” was among them. See “Miraculous,” on Amazon or our Christian Trust Foundation at website: www.fertigbooks.com

AMERICAN MARTYRS. A partial list of missionaries who died by violence in direct connection with their work for Christ is available on request. It shows that even before the establishment of the United States, Catholics were “baptized in the blood of missionaries.”