Pope: "Mistakes Were Made"

"It is not possible, indeed, to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by colonizers on the indigenous populations, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled on," the Pope said.

He was responding to Indian rights groups in Brazil who criticized him "for his insistence that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian before European conquerors arrived centuries ago" when he "told a regional conference of bishops in Brazil that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it." Such a comment, protestors objected, " failed to take into account that Indians were enslaved and killed by the Portuguese and Spanish settlers who forced them to become Catholic."

Hence the apology. Oh, wait. It's not an apology. It's a "dutiful mention," the Pope said.