In his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo XIV issued an unprecedented apology for the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery and for centuries of failure to condemn it, calling the Vatican’s record “a wound in Christian memory.” The pope linked
VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV did not frame his apology as a distant wrongdoing of the past. In his first encyclical, released Monday, he spoke about centuries of papal authority that enabled European sovereigns to subjugate and enslave “infidels,” and he asked the church for pardon.
It was, by his own account, not just an act of humility. It was a rupture in Christian memory.
“No pope had ever publicly acknowledged. much less apologized for. the role that past popes played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”” That was the stark line drawn by the Vatican’s record itself—until this week—when Leo used his encyclical. “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”). to lay out the church’s responsibility and the delay in confronting slavery.
Leo said the historical record amounted to a “wound in Christian memory. ” arguing that the church could not treat the past as detached from the present. He also connected that legacy to what he described as modern risks. warning that the digital revolution is fueling new forms of slavery and colonialism.
In the encyclical. he wrote: “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.” Then. in the language of direct accountability. he added: “For this. in the name of the church. I sincerely ask for pardon.”.
For Black American Catholics, activists, and scholars, the apology landed as something more than symbolic.
Shannen Dee Williams. a historian at the University of Dayton and the author of the 2022 history of American Black Catholic nuns. “Subversive Habits. ” welcomed Leo’s move as “a monumental step toward the kind of essential truth-telling and reparation that many Catholics have prayed and worked to witness.” She said the church has never been an innocent spectator in the story of white supremacy. “Black Catholics have waited a long time to hear the Vatican speak honestly about the church’s leading roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery–and thus by extension the enduring systems of anti-Black racism in the world today.”.
The Vatican, for its part, has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But Leo’s encyclical pointed to a different record: a chain of papal directives that authorized conquest and enslavement of non-Christians.
A key example cited by the encyclical is the papal bull Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452. The bull gave the Portuguese king and his successors rights “to invade. conquer. fight and subjugate” and to take possessions—including land—of “Saracens. and pagans. and other infidels. and enemies of the name of Christ” anywhere. It also granted permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”.
Three years after that, Romanus Pontifex formed the basis of what later became the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.
That authority did not end with Nicholas V. The permissions to the Portuguese were confirmed or renewed by Pope Callixtus III in 1456. Pope Sixtus IV in 1481. and Pope Leo X in 1514. according to the Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman. a Jesuit priest and author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery. Abolitionism. and the Catholic Church.” The rights were also extended to Spanish kings for the Americas.
In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. But it never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves. The Vatican maintains that a later bull. Sublimis Deus in 1537. reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples shouldn’t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property. and weren’t to be enslaved.
Leo acknowledged the 15th-century bulls in his encyclical. writing that “Already in the early modern period. the Apostolic See of Rome. responding to the requests of sovereigns. intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation. and. in certain cases. including the enslavement of ‘infidels.’”.
He also addressed the discomfort at judging historic decisions by today’s moral standards. “Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” Leo said.
Kellerman welcomed the apology but argued that more still needs to be said about the church’s role in slavery beyond admissions of wrongdoing.
“The Catholic Church has never been an innocent bystander in the history of white supremacy,” Williams said—echoing a long-running insistence among Black Catholics that general apologies for individual Christians have not matched the scale of institutional power.
In Leo’s encyclical, he framed the church’s own self-understanding as something that took far too long. He said the church has long affirmed the dignity of every human being as the basis of its doctrine. “even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.” And he returned to the phrase that may define the moment: “This constitutes a wound in Christian memory. one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.”.
That urgency carried forward into Leo’s warning about the future. He said the church must firmly condemn all forms of trafficking related to the digital technological revolution “if we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future for having failed to respect the treasure of human dignity that is required by our faith.”.
Anthea Butler. a senior fellow at the Koch History Center at Oxford University. said Leo needed to acknowledge and atone for the church’s complicity in historic slavery in order to speak credibly about “technological enslavement.” “For descendants of enslaved persons. this is once again a much needed apology from the pope. ” said Butler. who is Black.
Kellerman. who had previously written about slavery. abolitionism. and the Catholic Church. said Leo’s admission strengthened moral credibility but did not close the door on fuller documentation. “Pope Leo has strengthened the moral credibility of the church with this admission and apology today. ” Kellerman told The Associated Press. “Hopefully a future document will explain in more detail the church’s involvement with slaveholding. As a scholar I have some quibbles with the wording, but this is a truly remarkable moment.”.
The encyclical also placed Leo’s apology in a longer chain of church apologies—some broad, some specific, and some that still left a gap.
During a 1985 visit to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked forgiveness of Africans for the slave trade on behalf of Christians who participated in it. but not the popes. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island. Senegal—the largest slave-trading center in West Africa—he denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”.
Leo’s own family history adds another layer. According to genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr. 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black. listed in census records as mulatto. Black. Creole or a free person of color. His family tree includes slaveholders and enslaved people, Gates wrote in The New York Times.
And earlier this month, Leo’s connection to the geography of slavery brought him to Angola. During a visit to Angola last month. he prayed at a Catholic shrine at the site of an important hub of the African slave trade during Portugal’s colonial rule. While at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima. Leo recalled the “sorrow and great suffering” Angolans endured for centuries. but he didn’t refer specifically to slavery.
By Monday, however, the encyclical did. It named papal bulls and their consequences. It acknowledged that authority did not merely coexist with slavery—it helped legitimize it. And it made a direct plea for pardon. insisting that the church cannot walk away from the record as if it belongs only to history.
For Catholics who have waited generations for that kind of candor, the apology is an opening. For others, it raises an immediate question: what comes next, and how fully will the church document what it enabled—long before the world began to denounce slavery?
Pope Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas Vatican slavery apology Doctrine of Discovery Dum Diversas Romanus Pontifex Pope Nicholas V Pope Callixtus III Pope Sixtus IV Pope Leo X Sublimis Deus Black Catholic leaders trans-Atlantic slave trade Christian memory