Giovanni Caboto the Venetian-born English navigator and explorer working for King Henry VII (Tudor) of England had among his crew an Italian, Fra Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis and a few other Italian Frias, when he left Bristol, England on his voyage of discovery.

Giovanni Caboto landed in the area of Conception Bay, Newfoundland, on the Feast day of St. John the Baptist (June 24, 1497) and celebrated Holy Mass for the first time on Canadian soil (North America) one of his backers was a Bristol merchant named William Weston. Landing in Newfoundland Cabot's chaplin, Fra Giovanni de Carbonariis opened a Catholic Mission and built the First Catholic Church in North America in 1498, in what is now called Carbonear, on the Avalon peninsular of Newfoundland. This then is the first European Christian settlement in North America, but on the voyage Giovanni Caboto died, and a lot of his achievements are now being revealed.

Today the French claim of being the first Europeans to build a Christian settlement in North America has been hoisted. The Catholic religion was brought to the shores of North America by Giovanni Caboto, an explorer who was working for King Henry VII of England, and it was English Catholics that accompanied him.

Thus history has now proven that all the French claims could only be speculation on their part and are so far removed from any real facts to be considered true.

Yes, the French idea of Catholicism is very much on a par with the Taliban version of Islam.

They converted the indigenous people of North America to Catholicism, only to make them fanatics who would kill and rob for them in the very name of Christ. Just look at the actions of the Abenaki in their forays into British settlements across North America, where they murdered, raped and sold into slavery English-speaking people on orders from French Cardinals, like Armand Richelieu and Guilio Mazarini and the Catholic kings of France.

Kenneth T. Tellis