Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (c. 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was a Catholic Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of Castile, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World".

He was convinced that God had chosen him to reach that land, hidden from the Western world for ages, which the Roman philosopher Seneca had once prophesied would be revealed. His discovery would bring the Catholic faith, to which he was devoted, to the people who lived in that land.

The voyages of Columbus molded the future of European colonisation and encouraged European exploration of foreign lands for centuries to come.

Since Columbus supported the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives for economic reasons, he ultimately refused to baptise them, as Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians.

A candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church in 1866, celebration of Columbus's legacy perhaps reached a zenith in 1892 when the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas occurred. Monuments to Columbus like the Columbian Exposition in Chicago were erected throughout the United States and Latin America extolling him.

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