Vatican: Pope asks forgiveness for role played by Church in slavery

Pope Leo legitimization, in his first encyclical published Monday.

If some of his predecessors had recognized the participation of Christians in slavery, this is the first time that a pope has presented a public apology for the direct role played by the Church as an institution.

Throughout History, "the Roman Apostolic See, solicited by the demands of sovereigns, has intervened on several occasions to regulate and legitimize the modalities of submission and, in certain cases, of reduction into slavery of the 'infidels'", writes the pope American in “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity). “We cannot deny or minimize the delay with which the Church and society condemned the scourge of slavery,” he adds.

In this first major writing, devoted in particular to the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence, he denounces “new forms of slavery” at work behind the digital economy.

The Church “for a long time tolerated slavery and only later came to condemn it absolutely”: it is “a wound in Christian memory from which we cannot consider ourselves strangers,” adds Leo XIV.

“That is why, on behalf of the Church, I sincerely ask for forgiveness,†he continues. “It is inevitable to experience deep pain when considering the enormous suffering and humiliation that slavery meant for so many people, infinitely loved by the Lord, in contrast to their limitless dignity,” notes the sovereign pontiff. Previous popes have already recognized the participation of Christians in acts of slavery, notably John Paul II, who denounced this “tragedy” during his visit in Gorée, Senegal, in 1992.

Leo

“We had to wait until the 19th century to find a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery, particularly with Leo XIII,” the American pope recalls.

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