Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
June 17, 2020
“Columbus noster est!”
“Christopher Columbus is ours!” These words of Leo XIII, in his encyclical Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, issued July 16, 1892, on the IV Centenary of the
discovery of America, are like a distant echo to us, at a time when
iconoclastic fury in the United States of America is destroying the figure of
the Italian navigator.
Leo
XIII states in this encyclical that Christopher Columbus’s venture: «is in itself the
highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he
who achieved it, for the greatness of his mind and heart, can be compared to
but few in the history of humanity. By his toil another world emerged from the
unsearched bosom of the ocean: hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a
state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed
from savagery to gentleness and humanity; and, greatest of all, by the
acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the author, they have
been recalled from destruction to eternal life. (…) For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to
the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum,
and also the manner in which he endeavored to execute the design, it is
indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception
and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human
race owes not a little to the Church. (…)
This view and aim is known to have possessed his mind
above all; namely, to open a way for the Gospel over new lands and seas. (…)
Columbus certainly had joined to the study of nature the study of religion, and
had trained his mind on the teachings that well up from the most intimate
depths of the Catholic faith. For this reason, when he learned from the lessons
of astronomy and the record of the ancients, that there were great tracts of
land lying towards the West, beyond the limits of the known world, lands
hitherto explored by no man, he saw in spirit a mighty multitude, cloaked in
miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain
gods. Miserable it is to live in a barbarous state and with savage manners: but
more miserable to lack the knowledge of that which is highest, and to dwell in
ignorance of the one true God. Considering these things, therefore, in his
mind, he sought first of all to extend the Christian name and the benefits of
Christian charity to the West, as is abundantly proved by the history of the
whole undertaking”».
Hence, Christopher
Columbus belongs to the Church, and any affront to him is directed at the
Church, which has the duty to defend his memory. This spirit inspired Count Antoine-François-Félix Roselly de Lorgues (1805-1898)
who dedicated his life to promoting the cause for Christopher Columbus’s
canonization. Encouraged by Pius IX, in 1856, in Paris, Roselly de Lorgues published a two-volume work entitled: Cristophe Colomb. Histoire de sa vie et de
ses voyages; d’après des documents
authentiques tirés d’Espagne et d’Italie, which achieved world-wide success.
In this work, Roselly de Lorgues, for the first time, offers his thesis for the
canonization of the “Admiral of the Ocean”. He writes in a subsequent work: “…he was the
ambassador of God to unknown nations that the ancient world were unaware of” and “ the natural legate of the Holy See in
those new regions”. (Della vita di Cristoforo Colombo e delle
ragioni per chiederne la beatificazione, tr. it., per Ranieri Guasti, Prato
1876, p. 83)
Based on the
French Count’s studies, numerous petitions for opening the cause of his
canonization were begun, the first being those presented to Pius IX on July 2,
1866 by Cardinal Ferdinand
Donnet, Archbishop of Bordeaux and on May 8, 1867 by Monsignor Andrea Charvaz. Archbishop of Genoa. In 1870, a new
petition was put to Pius IX by a group of Fathers from the First Vatican
Council, but due to the interruption of the works and the subsequent death of
Pius IX, the initiative was brought to a halt.
In 1878, Archbishop Rocco Cocchia,
Vicar and Apostolic Delegate to Santa Domingo, Haiti and Venezuela, interpreted
the finding of Columbus’s remains in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo as a sign
and described the Admiral as the man called by Providence to the greatest work
of the modern ages. The Archbishop noted that Columbus’s initial ‘great idea’
was a crusade for the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher and that he had always
been considered “a man of great piety and religion”, who faced many sufferings
and much persecution with faith and heroism, so much so that the two poles to
his existence were: “pain and grace”.
On January 31,
1893, the request for the cause of his canonization boasted the adhesion of 904 Prelates. Along with the 264 Italian
bishops, the 96 French, the 64 Spanish, the 27 of the U.S., the 19 Mexican and
the 7 Portuguese, many, many other bishops and archbishops from all over the
world adhered to the petition, among whom were 42 cardinals. An Italian
scholar, Alfonso Marini Dettina, dedicated an accurate study to this theme which I
recommend for further study on the topic (Suppliche per la canonizzazione di
Cristoforo Colombo, in in C.e.s.c.o.m, Atti
del II Congresso Colombiano, Torino 2006, pp. 659-672).
There are those
who believe that some dark aspects exist in the life of Columbus. For instance,
a second illegitimate marriage, but in 1938, Father Maria Paolini, Postulator General
of the Franciscan Order, published a book entitled Christopher Columbus in his moral life, wherein he sets forth
twelve arguments demonstrating the legitimacy of his second union with Beatrice
Enriquez of Cordoba. Cardinal Eugenio
Pacelli, the Secretary of State, in a letter dated September 9, 1938, conveyed
to the author, Pius XI’s rejoicing about “a work which throws splendid beams of
light on the figure of the Discoverer of the New World, who emerges no less
magnificent and powerful in ecclesiastical History than he does in civil
History.”
The new request
for Columbus’ beatification was put forward to Pius XII in 1941 by some American
bishops. All the petitions for the canonization of the Admiral asked the
Pontiff to dispense with the ordinary process, considering the exceptionality
of the man, the seal given by Providence for his work and the exceptional
treatment Columbus received during his lifetime from the Holy See. Neither Pius
XII nor the Franciscan Order followed up the cause for his beatification and
after the Second Vatican Council, a vilifying campaign began, also within the
Catholic world, that reached its apex in 1992, on the V centenary of the
discovery of America, when Columbus was depicted as an avid, bloodthirsty,
colonialist conquistador.
Christopher Columbus statue torn down in Minnesota State Capital, June 10, 2020
Thirty years have passed and today the
ecological, indigenous ultra-left is conducting violent demonstrations in the
United States in which the statues of Christopher Columbus are being knocked
down, decapitated, defaced or removed. In recent years, many American States
have decided to transform Columbus Day, the 12th of October, the day
in which the arrival of the Italian navigator is celebrated, into “Indigenous
Peoples Day” - the day of the
indigenous American populations. And Pope Francis himself, instead of
re-launching the cry “Columbus belongs
to the Church”, praises the indigenous movements accusing Columbus of having
opened an era of genocide and slavery for the American peoples.
Christopher
Columbus and the conquistadors have been accused of genocide because of the
demographic collapse which occurred in those populations from the XVI century
onwards. Nonetheless, as the historian Marco Tangheroni (1946-2004) explained
well, we can speak of genocide when there is a definite will to annihilate a
population, as was seen in the Kulaks in Soviet Russia, the Jews in Nazi
Germany or even before that, the Vendéens
during the French Revolution; however in the case of the American
population, the demographic catastrophe was due to a biological shock caused by
some infective diseases introduced by the Europeans, and certainly not by the
will to annihilate (Cristianità,
Modernità Rivoluzione, Sugarco, Milano 2009, pp. 125-126). In the documents by the Spanish doctors who
went to America, we read, on the contrary, descriptions of their surprise and
powerlessness when faced with epidemics among the indigenous, manifested in a
new and absolutely unknown form.
Unless we imagine
that the diseases which wiped out the indigenous populations were fruit of a
“conspiracy” by the Spanish “powers that
be”. Neither today, nor in the XVI century, have epidemics been used as a
biological weapon to destroy indigenous people and Christopher Columbus is not
a symbol of iniquity, but the author of a venture defined by Francisco Lopez de
Gomara in his Historia General de las
Indias (1552), “the greatest thing since the creation of the world, apart
from the Incarnation and Death of the One Who created it.” («la mayor cosa después de la creación del
mundo, sacando la Encarnación y muerte del que lo crió». Edizione
Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas 1979, p. 7).
Translation: Contributor
Francesca Romana
