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| Pope Leo XIV in 2025 (Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar, Pope Leo XIV 2 (4x5 cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0) |
In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo has explicitly apologized for the role the papacy has played in legitimizing slavery. Though the encyclical deals mostly with moral challenges related to AI, and how it threatens to augment forms of domination akin to slavery, it also admits to the Church's history of moral failures regarding slavery. The most explicit articulation of this admission and apology comes in section 167 and deserves to be quoted in full:
176. In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, 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. [176] 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. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon...
The notes to this section of the encyclical appear below:
Note 174: As in the Papal Bulls Sicut Dudum (13 January 1435) and Etsi Suscepti (9 January 1442) of Eugenius IV, and in the Papal Bulls Dum Diversas (18 June 1452) and Romanus Pontifex (8 January 1455) of Nicholas V. Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel. The need for evangelization was frequently compromised or at least misunderstood with regard to the needs of worldly powers, thus relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience.Note 175: Cf. Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter In Plurimis (5 May 1888), Acta Leonis XIII, VIII, Rome, 1889, 169-192. Consider that, as late as 1866, the Holy Office distinguished between the immoral and moral aspects of slavery, without fully condemning it: Instruction of the Holy Office on various doubts of Monsignor Massaia, Vicar Apostolic in the country of the Galla, April 1866, response to question no. 15.Note 176: Cf. Saint John Paul II, Bull Incarnationis Mysterium (29 November 1998), 11: AAS 91 (1999), 139-141.
Much reporting, including within Catholic circles, has praised the encyclical and the apology for the hitherto unprecedented degree of admission of responsibility from the papacy for its own role in slavery. Many church leaders, including in the Episcopal Church, could stand to learn from the truthful, unvarnished, non-euphemistic language in the admission.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
