Antonio de Montesinos

Here's another fellow who deserves a fine biography in English. He was a Dominican friar who delivered this sermon to the Spanish conquistadors in 1511:

Tell me, by what right or justice do you hold these Indians in such cruel and
horrible slavery? By what right do you wage such detestable wars on these people
who lived mildly and peacefully in their own lands, where you have consumed
infinite numbers of them with unheard of murders and desolations? Why do you so
greatly oppress and fatigue them, not giving them enough to eat or caring for
them when they fall ill from excessive labors, so that they die or rather are
slain by you, so that you may extract and acquire gold every day? And what care
do you take that they receive religious instruction and come to know their God
and creator, or that they be baptized, hear mass, or observe holidays and
Sundays? Are they not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to
love them as you love yourselves? How can you lie in such profound and lethargic
slumber? Be sure that in your present state you can no more be saved than the
Moors or Turks who do not have and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.

Did we hear anything this forthright from the Vatican during the Holocaust? Apparently, Montesinos participated in a later expedition to the Chesapeake which was abandoned in 1527.