The Priest Who Heard Isaiah in the New World

In 1514, the Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas stood before his congregation on the island of Hispaniola preparing a Pentecost sermon. The chapel was full. The colonists sang hymns with gusto, received communion with reverence, and bowed their heads in solemn prayer. They considered themselves faithful Christians.

But de las Casas had been reading Scripture with freshly opened eyes. He had watched these same worshipers work enslaved Taíno people to death in gold mines. He had seen mothers too starved to nurse their infants. He had counted the graves.

That Pentecost morning, something broke open inside him. He told his congregation that their offerings meant nothing — that God would not hear their prayers while their hands dripped with the blood of the innocent. The colonists were stunned. Some were furious. Most ignored him entirely.

De las Casas spent the next fifty years fighting for Indigenous rights, traveling back and forth to Spain, pleading before kings and councils, writing volume after volume documenting the atrocities. He gave up his own enslaved workers first, then demanded everyone else do the same.