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 On July 31, 1566, Bartolome de las Casas, the first Spaniard ordained in the New World died in Spain.
The first Europeans to the New World treated the indigenous people deplorably.
It deteriorated to the point that Pope Paul III was forced to issue a papal bull declaring, “The Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, they desire exceedingly to receive it. We define and declare Indians are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, nor should they be in any way enslaved.” (From the papal bull Sublimus Deus)
One of the notable exceptions was Bartolome de Las Casas, known as the “Apostle to the Indians.”
As adviser to the colonial governor in Santa Domingo, he witnessed first hand the Spanish genocidal attacks upon the indigenous people. What he saw outraged him, and he renounced his secular position and became the first priest ordained in the New World.
Las Casas’s unrelenting efforts (he crossed the Atlantic 14 times) to express the love of Christ to the Indians led to the enactment of the New Laws of 1542 which prohibited the enslavement of native peoples.
Toward the end of his life, Las Casas wrote a lengthy theology of missions called “The Only Way of Attracting all Unbelievers to Religion.” In this work he held out the ideals of conversion without coercion, of catechesis before conversion, and of missionaries accommodating (wherever possible) to native cultures. (Mark Noll, Old Religion in a New World, p. 42) These values, almost unheard of during his lifetime, have now become standard missionary practices.
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