Pope Leo Makes a Historic Apology

Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the role the Holy See itself played in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican's record a "wound in Christian memory." Past popes have apologized for Christians' involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, notes the AP. But no pope has ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes themselves played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave "infidels." History's first American-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," (Magnificent Humanity), which was released Monday.

The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an era of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the trans-Atlantic slave trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling. In doing so, Leo responded to decades of calls by Black American Catholics, activists, and scholars for the Holy See to atone for its own role in the colonial-era trade in human beings. "It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord," Leo wrote. "For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon."

The Vatican has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But a series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right "to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate" and take all possessions—including land—of "Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ" anywhere. The bull also gave the Portuguese permission "to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." That bull and another issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.

In his encyclical, Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII was the first pope to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888, though that was long after many countries had already abolished it. The pope said that the church has long affirmed the dignity of every human being, "even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized." "This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached," he said.