In the Name of God.
The Catholic Church did not merely tolerate what was done to Moroccan subjects. It authorized it, in writing, through official instruments called papal bulls, signed by popes, distributed to colonial monarchs as legal grants of power over non-Christian peoples. The Church's lawyers built the theological framework. The Church's missionaries administered the system on the ground. The Church's language, Latin, the language of the Crown, supplied the vocabulary that renamed you, reclassified you, and suppressed from the record the noun that carried your treaty rights. The rights themselves were never touched, every instrument in the chain is void from the root.
In 1537, 130 years before the Virginia Act that made Christianity no protection against enslavement, the Pope told them to stop. They did not stop. In 2023, the Vatican issued a statement saying the Doctrine of Discovery was never part of Catholic teaching. There was no remedy. No restoration. No reparation. A statement. This page is what the authorization chain actually said, what the word "Indian" actually meant in the Latin every colonial scholar knew, and why the Church's 2023 apology is insufficient to undo what 600 years of papal grants set in motion.
Every colonial title to Moroccan-subject territory traces to papal grants. Those grants traced to one claimed authority: that the Pope held power over every living person on earth, Christian and non-Christian. That claim never reached the Empire of Morocco. Every instrument built on it was void from the root.
The chain below tracks each papal bull in sequence, the date, the Pope, the text of the claim, and the specific grounds on which that claim did not reach Empire of Morocco domain.
This is the root. Every colonial papal bull derives its claimed authority to grant territory from this document. The Pope claims universal jurisdiction over all people on earth, Christian and non-Christian. But the Sultan of Morocco was sovereign of an Islamic empire. He did not acknowledge papal supremacy. He was not subject to it. The jurisdictional predicate does not reach Empire of Morocco domain, Empire of Morocco subjects, or Empire of Morocco territory. Every instrument built on this root is void as to Empire of Morocco from 1302. Before the first colonial ship sailed, the authorization was already insufficient.
The word "Saracen" (Latin Saracenus) is the canonical term for Muslims, including Empire of Morocco subjects. This is the first explicit papal authorization of enslavement of non-Christians. But even within Canon Law's own framework, this authorization had a condition: "enemies of Christ", a canonical designation requiring an actual act of aggression against Christians. The Empire of Morocco was not an enemy. It was in active treaty and commercial relations with Christian Europe. The Crusade doctrine's own preconditions were not met. Dum Diversas also did not reach Empire of Morocco subjects because Unam Sanctam's jurisdictional predicate was void as to Empire of Morocco. Two independent grounds. Both void.
Expanded Dum Diversas. Established the dominium doctrine: Christian European sovereigns could acquire dominion over non-Christian territories through discovery. The foundational "Doctrine of Discovery" instrument. Void as to Empire of Morocco on the same grounds as Dum Diversas, plus an additional ground: the nemo dat principle. The Pope did not own Empire of Morocco territory. He held no title to it. He could not grant what he did not possess. A Pope granting the Sultan's domain to Portugal is the same as someone selling a house they do not own.
This is the document that divided the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal, one year after Columbus's first contact. "Found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered." The Pope is granting territory he has never seen, that he does not own, that belongs to the Empire of Morocco, whose domain is explicitly excluded from papal jurisdiction by Canon Law's own treaty-protected infidel doctrine. Every colonial title in North America ultimately traces to this document. The document is void as to Empire of Morocco from three independent grounds: jurisdictional predicate failure, nemo dat, and the treaty-protected infidel doctrine.
This is the canonical root of name chain Step 6, "Indian." Not a geographical mistake. A pre-cleared administrative category. The same papal office that issued this authorization also issued Sublimis Deus 44 years later correcting the abuse of this category, which confirms that "Indian" was a Church institutional term, not an accident. If Columbus made a mistake, the Church would not need to issue a corrective order. You do not issue stop orders for accidents. You issue them for systems.
"Indian" was not a geographical mistake. It was a Church administrative category, in Latin, applied deliberately to Moroccan subjects in their own western territory.
The Latin word is Indigena (plural: Indigenae). It means: native of the land. One born into a place. One who belongs to a territory. It is the root of the English word "indigenous." The Catholic Church, specifically through the Franciscan Order, which was the institutional administrator of missionary programs to non-Christian native peoples, was using "Indigenae" as a formal administrative category for non-Christian native peoples before Columbus sailed in 1492.
Christopher Columbus was not educated by accident. He was educated through Franciscan sponsorship. His navigation project was developed in close collaboration with Franciscan scholars. The Franciscan Order was, at that time, the institutional administrator of the Church's mission to the indigenae, the native peoples in territories outside Christendom. When Columbus applied the label "Indio", the Spanish rendering of the Latin "Indigena", to the peoples he encountered in the western territory of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, he was not confused about where he was. He was applying the Church's pre-existing administrative classification system to a population already known to inhabit the western territories.
Amerigo Vespucci, whose 1503 accounts gave the Americas their name, explicitly described the western territory as a "new world," not India. Columbus and Vespucci were contemporaries. Columbus knew the distinction. The "geographical mistake" narrative was installed retroactively. It was never credible to anyone who had read the maps Columbus had read.— Moroccan Treaty Research: Indian Etymology Finding, 2026
The confirmation comes from the Church itself. In 1537, Pope Paul III issued Sublimis Deus, a corrective papal bull specifically addressing the indigenae category. He did not say "Columbus was confused." He said the indigenae, the people in the authorized territories, had been wrongly enslaved and must be freed. A corrective order presupposes a system. You do not issue a stop order for a random mistake. The Church's own 1537 document proves that "Indian/Indigenae" was an institutional category in deliberate institutional use, not a navigator's error that took 44 years to notice.
The colonial apparatus that used the "Indian" category knew this. The Crown taught Latin. Every colonial official, every missionary, every legal scholar who administered the system understood that Indigena meant "native of the land." Applying that word to Moroccan subjects, people who were already on the land, the original inhabitants of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa's western territory, was not a mistake. It was a precise institutional act: placing Empire of Morocco subjects under Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction by categorizing them as indigenae within the Church's existing administrative system, suppressing their identity as subjects of the Empire of Morocco sovereign, and stripping them of the treaty protection that identity carried.
The four documented pathways to "Indian", all reaching the same conclusion
Four independent lines of scholarship trace where the word "Indian" came from. They are not competing explanations, they converge. Every one of them is incompatible with the geographical-mistake narrative. Three of the four predate Columbus by centuries.
| Pathway | Source | What It Shows | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indigena / Indigenae (Latin) |
Franciscan administrative vocabulary, pre-1492. Formalized in Dudum Siquidem, Pope Alexander VI, September 26, 1493, 13 months after first contact. | "Native of the land." The Church's pre-existing institutional category for non-Christian native peoples in authorized territories. Columbus was Franciscan-educated and applied the category deliberately. The Pope locked it into canon law as a juridical category within 13 months of first contact. Sublimis Deus (1537) later corrected its misuse, confirming it was a system, not an accident. You issue stop orders for systems. | Primary, carries institutional documentation at both ends: the application (1493) and the correction (1537) |
| Hindi (Arabic) |
Al-Biruni, Kitab al-Hind (1030 CE). Absorbed into Iberian scholarly tradition through Arabic translation networks available in Columbus's era. | "Hindi" carried a physiognomic meaning in Arabic scholarship, a descriptor for dark-complexioned peoples, not only a geographic one. This usage was in Iberian intellectual circulation before Columbus sailed. The word's color-descriptive content predates its geographic application in the European record by four centuries. | Supporting, independent discipline; confirms non-geographic meaning of the root |
| Inde (Old French / Medieval European) |
Chanson de Roland (11th c.); medieval European heraldry and color vocabulary. | "Inde" described the dark blue-black color range (the indigo register) in medieval heraldry and literature. The Chanson de Roland describes Saracens, the Church's word for Empire of Morocco-origin Muslims, as "Inde" in complexion. "Indian" had a color-physiognomic valence in European vocabulary 400 years before Columbus sailed. | Supporting, establishes color-descriptive use of the root, predates Columbus |
| En Dios (Spanish, "in God") |
Some colonial-era Franciscan documents reference indios in the context of "en Dios" — in God's hands — as mission wards under the Church's administrative custody. This is a minority scholarly interpretation, not definitively confirmed in primary colonial documents. | Franciscan sources in some instances frame indios in the context of "en Dios", in God's hands, naming mission wards as people under the Church's administrative custody. This ecclesiastical-wardship reading, if confirmed, reinforces the institutional-administrative pathway rather than any geographic one. | Minority scholarly tradition; not definitively confirmed as a primary etymological pathway; included here because, if supported, it is consistent with the institutional reading — does not contradict the primary Indigena/Indigenae pathway |
Three of the four pathways carry no geographic content whatsoever. The fourth, Indigena/Indigenae, means "native of the land," which is the land already under the person's feet, not a land across an ocean. Not one of the four documented pathways supports the explanation that Columbus made a navigational error about where he was. The geographic-mistake story has no documentary support in any of the four pathways the primary record provides. What the record provides is: a Church institutional category, an Arabic color-physiognomic descriptor, a medieval European complexion term, and an ecclesiastical wardship frame. All four are institutional or descriptive. All four precede Columbus or trace to his Franciscan training. All four point to the same conclusion: the word "Indian" applied to Empire of Morocco subjects was a classification act, not an error.
Saracen was the canonical Latin word for Muslim. When Verrazzano reached the North American coast in 1524 and called the people he saw "Saracens," he was using the Church's recognized vocabulary for the Empire of Morocco subjects who were already there.
In 1524, the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed the North American coast on behalf of Francis I of France. His letter to the King describes the people he encountered on that coast using the canonical vocabulary for North African/Empire of Morocco-origin peoples. A note on the primary source: the Verrazzano letter survives in two transmission streams. The Hakluyt (1582) and Ramusio (1556) editions use the term "Saracens"; the Cèllere Codex manuscript, held in the Pierpont Morgan Library and regarded as the authoritative manuscript copy, uses the term "Ethiopians." Both terms, as used by 16th-century European writers trained in Church Latin, described non-Christian North African peoples — the canonical vocabulary for Empire of Morocco-origin populations. Both terms in this tradition refer to the same class: the Moorish/North African population of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa's domain. The word varies by transmission; the referent is the same.
Verrazzano was not confused. He was using the ecclesiastical vocabulary he had been trained in. He reached for the canonical North African/Empire of Morocco descriptor — whichever word his text actually used — because he recognized the population in front of him. This is primary source evidence that European explorers, arriving in the western territory thirty-two years after Columbus, did not see an unknown population. They saw Empire of Morocco subjects and named them in the vocabulary their Church Latin education gave them for exactly that population.
| Canonical Name | Language | Meaning | Who It Named | Legal Consequence in Canon Law |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saracen (Saracenus) |
Latin | Muslim person, specifically North African/Empire of Morocco | Empire of Morocco subjects, confirmed by Verrazzano 1524 on North American coast | Subject to Crusade doctrine, BUT only if "enemy of Christ" (active aggressor). Empire of Morocco was in treaty relations with Christian Europe, not hostile. |
| Moor (Maurus) |
Latin | North African, geographically specific; the Amazigh and Arab populations of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa | Empire of Morocco subjects, retained in English law as a distinct treaty-protected category ("Turks and Moors in amity with her Majesty," 1601 English Poor Law) | Treaty-protected status; the 1601 English Poor Law explicitly exempted Moors from its disabilities because they were subjects of sovereign states in treaty with England |
| Infidel (Infidelis) |
Latin | One without [Christian] faith, the master category for all non-Christians | Broadest category: Empire of Morocco subjects, indigenous Americans, Jews, everyone outside the Church | Under Hostiensis position (colonial bulls): no rights. Under Innocent IV/Vitoria position (which won): natural law rights survive; treaty partnerships override infidel disabilities |
| Indigena (Indigenae) |
Latin | Native of the land; one born into a place, root of "indigenous" and "Indian" | Non-Christian native peoples in authorized territories, applied by Columbus to Empire of Morocco subjects in the western territory of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa | Subject to mission administration; subject to conversion mandate; subject to Church ecclesiastical courts rather than Empire of Morocco sovereign protection, until Sublimis Deus (1537) declared this application void |
| Morisco | Spanish | Converted Moor, a baptized Muslim of Moorish/Empire of Morocco origin | Empire of Morocco subjects who converted under forced conversion orders (1502 Castile) | Despite baptism: subject to limpieza de sangre (blood purity) statutes, Moorish ancestry was permanent canonical disability regardless of Christian baptism. Directly contradicted Council of Trent (1547). |
| Heathen | English | Protestant-theater successor to "infidel/pagan" in Canon Law | Non-Christians in British colonial territory, used in Virginia Acts 1667 and 1705 as the category trigger for enslavement | Same legal disabilities as "infidel" in the Catholic theater, but the vocabulary changed while the mechanism remained identical |
The colonial apparatus oscillated between two incompatible characterizations of Empire of Morocco subjects, and this oscillation is an adverse admission in both directions simultaneously:
When convenient for extraction: Empire of Morocco subjects = "Saracens" → triggers Dum Diversas authorization → enslavement permitted.— Moroccan Treaty Research: Canon Law Vocabulary Finding, 2026
When convenient for commerce and diplomacy: Empire of Morocco subjects = "subjects of the Emperor of Morocco" → treaty-protected persons → must be treated as treaty nationals.
These two positions cannot coexist. A people cannot simultaneously be "Saracens subject to enslavement" AND "subjects of a treaty-partner sovereign with protected status." The colonial apparatus chose its vocabulary based on what it wanted to do to the people in front of it, not based on what those people actually were. Both uses of the vocabulary are adverse admissions: acknowledging the Empire of Morocco identity when useful, suppressing it when costly.
Canon Law did not speak with one voice. There was an internal theological debate about whether non-Christians had any rights. The colonial bulls relied on the position that LOST. The winning position declared Empire of Morocco subjects free in 1537, 130 years before the Virginia Act made Christianity no protection.
The two columns below show each position, its primary proponent, its theological argument, and its outcome in the official Canon Law record.
Cardinal Hostiensis, c. 1271
With the coming of Christ, all jurisdiction, dominion, and sovereignty of infidels and unbelievers were automatically transferred to the Church. Infidels have no legitimate authority whatsoever. They are not legitimate sovereigns. Their property can be taken. Their persons can be enslaved. The Pope, holding supreme authority, can grant their lands to Christian monarchs.
This is the theological foundation of Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493). Every colonial bull was built on this position. This position officially lost the internal Canon Law debate in 1537.
Pope Innocent IV (c. 1245) + Francisco de Vitoria (1532)
Infidels can have legitimate dominion. Infidels can be legitimate sovereigns over their own peoples. The Pope has jurisdiction over all persons on matters of sin, but NOT authority to strip infidels of property or sovereignty simply because they are infidels. Only if infidels harm Christians, prevent preaching, or violate natural law may the Pope intervene.
Vitoria added: the indigenous peoples of the Americas had dominium, legitimate sovereignty and property rights, before Spain arrived. The Pope cannot grant what belongs to them. Inter Caetera was not a legitimate authorization.
This is a POPE and a Dominican professor at the University of Salamanca, not heretics. The King of Spain tried to silence Vitoria. His attempt to stop the lectures proves the colonial apparatus knew exactly what was at stake.
The decisive moment came on June 2, 1537.
"...the Indians are truly men... the aforesaid Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property... nor should they be in any way enslaved... should any of the aforesaid come to be reduced to slavery, we desire... that they be set free... anyone who violates these provisions shall incur, ipso facto, excommunication."— Sublimis Deus, Pope Paul III, June 2, 1537
"Should any of the aforesaid come to be reduced to slavery, we desire that they be set free." This is a sitting Pope, in an official papal bull, declaring that Empire of Morocco subjects classified as "Indigenae/Indians" who had been enslaved must be freed. Excommunication for those who violate this order. The date is June 2, 1537.
Now count the years: Virginia Act 1667, making Christianity no protection against enslavement, was enacted 130 years after Sublimis Deus. The Virginia colonial statute of 1705 was enacted 168 years after Sublimis Deus. The 13th Amendment exception clause (1865) was enacted 328 years after Sublimis Deus. Every colonial instrument from 1537 forward was enacted on canonically revoked authority. The colonial apparatus that came after 1537 was not acting on a valid theological license. It was operating on a license its own supreme institutional authority had withdrawn, with excommunication for violators, and it continued anyway.
The missionary was not merely a preacher. The missionary was the administrative arm of the colonial state, operating under Regio Patronato, the Crown's legal authority over the Church in the Americas.
Pope Julius II's Regio Patronato (1508) granted the Spanish Crown the right to appoint Church officials in the Americas. The Church in the colonies was not independent of the colonial state. It was an instrument of it. The mission system was colonial administration. The baptism was colonial processing. The catechism was colonial programming. And the Inquisition was colonial enforcement, specifically targeting Empire of Morocco subjects who maintained their identity within the system that had forced their conversion.
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Forced Conversion
Spain's 1502 edict ordered Muslims in Castile to convert or leave. Thousands who remained became "Moriscos", baptized Moors. The baptism was not voluntary. The Council of Trent (1547) declared baptism fully effective, a genuine change in canonical status. But for Moriscos, baptism changed nothing. They were still watched, still prosecuted, still expelled. The canonical promise of baptism was applied selectively: it was sufficient to prevent the Muslim from practicing Islam but insufficient to protect them from the Inquisition.
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Limpieza de sangre, Blood Purity
The limpieza de sangre statutes (first enacted in Toledo, 1449) held that Moorish ancestry, Muslim blood, created a permanent canonical disability regardless of baptism. A baptized Morisco could not hold Church office, attend university, join a military order, or hold civic position. The "stain" (mancha) of Moorish ancestry could not be washed away by the sacrament the Church claimed was the most powerful instrument of transformation available to humanity. The contradiction was stark, documented, and never resolved: Trent said baptism worked; the Inquisition acted as if it didn't.
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The Inquisition of Moriscos
The Spanish Inquisition prosecuted Moriscos for maintaining their identity. The Inquisition's own records document who the Moriscos were, where they lived, what Arabic phrases they still used, what food restrictions they maintained, how they prayed. These records are the colonial apparatus's own documentation of Empire of Morocco subjects being persecuted for maintaining their Empire of Morocco identity within the system that had forced their conversion. The Inquisition records are presence proof, identity proof, and intent proof simultaneously.
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The Morisco Expulsion (1609–1614)
Between 1609 and 1614, Spain expelled approximately 300,000 Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula. The Expulsion Edict identified them as "Moriscos" — "little Moors" — acknowledging the Moorish identity the Reconquista had tried to convert away. Most were driven into the Maghreb, the Empire of Morocco's own domain, and many specifically to the Sultan's Atlantic coast. You cannot expel an absent population. The Expulsion is a state instrument that proves presence, and proves the colonial state recognized the people it was expelling as Moors. Moors who had already emigrated to New Spain before the Expulsion remained in the colonial Americas and are documented in Inquisition records in the western territory.
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The Converso Parallel, Jewish Empire of Morocco Subjects Under the Same Apparatus
The Alhambra Decree (1492), issued the same year Columbus sailed, expelled Jews from Spain. Many fled to Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa and became Empire of Morocco subjects. Those who converted rather than leave became "Conversos" or "Marranos." Those who reached the colonial Americas carried both identities: the baptized name the Crown required and the prior identity the Inquisition hunted. Conversos in New Spain, Peru, and Cartagena were prosecuted by the same Inquisition tribunals that prosecuted Moriscos, under the same limpieza de sangre blood-purity statutes, for maintaining Jewish practice. The Inquisition records from Mexico City and Lima document Jewish Empire of Morocco subjects' presence, their prior identity, and their persecution simultaneously, in the same archives as the Morisco records, through the same institution, under the same statutes. The colonial apparatus ran two parallel identity-suppression pipelines: one for Muslims who had converted (Morisco), one for Jews who had converted (Converso). Both were Empire of Morocco subjects. Both were prosecuted by the Church. The US consul's own diplomatic record (FRUS 1880) confirms that Jewish Moroccan subjects were still within the treaty class through the 1836 Treaty, the Converso pipeline did not extinguish Empire of Morocco subject status any more than the Morisco pipeline extinguished it.
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The Mission System as Labor Control
The Encomienda system (1503–1542) was canonically sanctioned forced labor of "Indians", each encomienda holder received the labor of a designated number of indigenae for a term, with a requirement to Christianize them. The mission administered the conversion; the encomienda received the labor. One was the spiritual branch; the other was the economic branch. They operated together as a single system. The Christianization mandate was not incidental to the labor extraction, it was the canonical justification for it. Sublimis Deus (1537) revoked this system. The encomienda continued for another century regardless.
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The Virginia Act 1667, Baptism Made Irrelevant
"Baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom." This British colonial statute in Virginia, 130 years after Sublimis Deus, 120 years after the Council of Trent declared baptism effective, abolished the one protection Empire of Morocco subjects had used to argue they were not enslaved. The statute was not a theological statement. It was a property protection statute. The planter class needed to be able to baptize enslaved workers without converting them into free people. Theology was amended by the economic interest. The result was a population that was simultaneously Christian, baptized, attending Church, worshipping the God of their captors, and enslaved. Religion had served its purpose as a reclassification mechanism. Now it was discarded.
On March 30, 2023, the Vatican issued a joint statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. No remedy was offered. No restoration was ordered. No property was returned. No one was compensated. No one was recognized. A statement was issued.
"The 'doctrine of discovery' is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church... The Church repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples."
486 years after Sublimis Deus (1537) said the same thing. The Church in 2023 called the Doctrine of Discovery "not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church." The Church in 1537 declared enslavement of indigenae "null and void and of no effect" and threatened excommunication for violators. The 2023 statement added nothing to the legal record that 1537 had not already established, except a public relations acknowledgment after centuries of silence on the question.
What the 2023 statement did not do: it did not issue a corrective canonical instrument reversing the colonial bulls. It did not name Inter Caetera as void. It did not order restoration of any land or property. It did not establish a claims process. It did not acknowledge that the populations classified as "Indians" under Dudum Siquidem (1493) were Empire of Morocco subjects with treaty rights. It did not acknowledge that the population currently classified as "Black" or "African American" was the same population that Sublimis Deus (1537) had declared must be freed. It repudiated a doctrine, while leaving every structural consequence of that doctrine in place.
This is the difference between an apology and a remedy. The five forms of remedy in international law, restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition, are all absent from the 2023 statement. What the statement provided is satisfaction in the narrowest sense: public acknowledgment that something was wrong. Satisfaction without the other four forms is not remedy. It is acknowledgment without consequence for those who built centuries of extraction on the doctrine being repudiated.
The canonical authorization chain is void at three independent points. From before the first colonial ship sailed. From 1537 when the Church revoked its own authorization. And from 2023 when the Church confirmed the revocation. Every colonial instrument built on this chain inherits the void.
The colonial apparatus used Canon Law's vocabulary, Saracen, Indian, infidel, heathen, while discarding Canon Law's doctrine, Sublimis Deus, the Council of Trent, the treaty-protected infidel principle, whenever that doctrine created rights for Empire of Morocco subjects. The result was a system that wore the language of God while violating every theological principle that language was supposed to represent. The wrong was authorized in the name of God. The apology was issued in the name of the same institution. Neither the authorization nor the apology was sufficient, because neither was accompanied by remedy. The five forms of remedy remain outstanding: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition. A statement that an authorization was void does not undo what the void authorization set in motion.— Moroccan Treaty Research: Canon Law Integration, 2026