Metanoia

QUOTE

Richard Rohr once said…

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

(American priest and writer)

CONCEPT

Metanoia

Metanoia, historically used in religious contexts to mean repentance, it has evolved to signify a profound, often life-altering transformation in one’s perspective, values, or way of being.

Unlike a simple change of opinion, metanoia involves a deep internal shift that reorients how a person understands themselves and the world.

STORY

A Grand … Rethinking?

In 1511, a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos climbed into the pulpit on the island of Hispaniola and delivered a sermon that shocked the Spanish colonist—and changed the course of one man’s life.

Montesinos denounced the brutal treatment of the Indigenous people under Spanish rule. He thundered: 

“Tell me, by what right do you hold these Indians in such horrible servitude? Are they not men? Do they not have rational souls?” 

His words enraged the colonists, who profited from forced labor and conquest. But among those listening was a young encomendero (landholder) named Bartolomé de las Casas.

At the time, Las Casas was a typical colonist: he held land, enslaved Indigenous people, and benefitted from the very system Montesinos condemned. Yet the sermon pierced him. Over the following years, he wrestled with his conscience.

He eventually came to a painful realization: he had been complicit in grave injustice.

In 1514, Las Casas renounced his holdings and freed his enslaved laborers. He devoted the rest of his life to defending the rights of Indigenous peoples, traveling to Spain to argue before the Crown, and writing extensively to expose the atrocities of colonization. His book ”A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” cataloged massacres and abuses with searing detail.

Las Casas was far from perfect—he initially suggested African slavery as a substitute for Indigenous labor before later condemning all slavery—but his transformation was profound. From conqueror to reformer, from participant in oppression to its most famous critic in the Spanish world, his life embodied metanoia: a radical turning of the heart and mind.

Centuries later, he is remembered as one of the earliest voices for universal human rights.