Brother Las Casa
Beatification 17 July 2000

"The cleric Bartolomé de Las Casas, like all of the other colonizers, was very concerned about cultivating his land and extracting the gold from his mines. He called upon the native people to do this work and used them for his own profit. While he fed them as well as he could and treated them with care and compassion, he never stopped to think these people were non-believers and that it was his duty to bring them to the Church of Christ.

Since he was the only cleric in the region, he would often leave his home and go to another colony to say Mass for the Spaniards living there. One day when he was preparing his preaching he was struck by the words of scripture he read, (if I am not mistaken, the text was Ecclesiasticus 34,"the sacrifice of an offering unjustly acquired is a mockery; The Most High takes no pleasure in offerings from the godless, multiplying sacrifices will not gain his pardon for sin. Offering sacrifice from the property of the poor is as bad as slaughtering a son before his father's very eyes. A meager diet is the very life of the poor, he who withholds it is a man of blood). He realized that this was the same misery and suffering the Spanish were imposing on the natives.

Another event that helped him come to this realization was what was happening in Española, A group of the Religious of St. Dominic were preaching that it was not acceptable to own Indians and that they would refuse to give absolution to anyone who did. Las Casas believed that such actions were outrageous and refused to accept the position of the Dominicans. One day he went to confession to one of them who refused him absolution. After demanding an explanation he began to argue with the Dominican concluding with the following statement,"therefore, dear father, I conclude that the truth always has many adversaries and lies have many accomplices."

Despite his reaction the argument served him well. It made him think and realize just how ignorant and dangerous his position really was, and that what was being done to the natives was tyrannical and unjust.

Everything he read after that confirmed this insight. He often said that once he began to reject the shadows of ignorance he never again read a book, (and in the forty years that followed they were infinite in number), in which he was not confirmed in his fight for justice for the natives and his condemnation of the injustices, harms and evils inflicted upon them by the colonizers.

He decided that the time had come to preach this message from the pulpit. Although he had treated them kindly, he felt that in order to be honest with himself and true to his conscience he had to let his Indians go free... He went to see the governor Diego Velasquez and explained to him that the only way to save his soul was to free his Indians... The Governor was astonished to hear these words from the mouth of Las Casas. How could this man who was still a cleric and very much a businessman, have such a dramatic change of heart and want to preach the same message as the Dominicans? It was all the more unbelievable because he was known to be a terribly greedy man with one goal in mind, 'to make as much profit as possible from his farm and his mines.'

The Governor told him to go back and think about this again ... but Las Casas was determined to go ahead ... That same day was the feast of the Assumption and he had been asked to preach in this same town where he had come to see the Governor. He preached on the active and contemplative life, the theme of the gospel for that day. He got onto the topic of the spiritual and temporal works of charity and began to admonish the Spaniards for the inhumane treatment they had towards their slaves. He told them that they benefited from these acts of charity from the Indians and that they should treat them in the same manner... They were absolutely dumbfounded and even scandalized by what they heard."

Fray de Las Casas"Historia de Indias,"Libro III, cap 79.