"Of course, the memory of a glorious past admitted the Pope cannot ignore the shadows that were brought along by the evangelisation of the Latin American continent: the sufferings and the injustice inflicted by the colonisers on the native populations, often trampled on in their fundamental human rights, cannot be forgotten. But the due mention of such unjustifiable crimes crimes that, after all, had already been condemned even then by such missionaries as Bartolomeo de Las Casas and by such theologians as Francesco da Vitoria from the University of Salamanca does not mean we cannot gratefully acknowledge the wonderful work made by God’s grace amidst those populations over these centuries". According to the Pope, then, "in the Continent the Gospel has become the fundamental tool of a dynamic synthesis that, with different aspects in each nation, still expresses the identity of the Latin American peoples", as much now as in the past.
