Pope Leo XIV apologizes for Vatican’s role in slavery

In his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo XIV issued a historic apology for the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery and for centuries of failure to denounce it. The pope linked the issue to modern forms of slavery and colonialism fueled by t

VATICAN CITY — The apology landed in the Vatican’s own language of conscience, and it came with the weight of institutional memory behind it.

Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the role the Holy See itself played in legitimizing slavery and for failing to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”

The Vatican’s leader delivered the apology in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), released Monday. While past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. no pope had publicly acknowledged—let alone apologized for—the role that earlier popes played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”.

Leo raised the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the encyclical as he addressed what he called new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling. He tied that argument to the unregulated labor required to procure rare minerals needed for AI chips.

“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 apology did not come out of nowhere. The Vatican has long insisted it upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. Yet the encyclical points to specific Vatican directives from the 15th century that authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians.

In 1452. Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas. giving 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 granted permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”.

A second bull, Romanus Pontifex, issued three years later, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.

That authority was not a one-time authorization. Nicholas V’s 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.” Spanish kings received the rights for the Americas.

In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. But it did not formally rescind, abrogate, or reject 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’s apology also rests on a timeline of condemnation—one he frames as late. In the encyclical. he 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. Before that, Leo wrote, even church institutions had slaves in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Acknowledging the Holy See’s own role in the 15th-century papal bulls. Leo wrote: “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.’”.

The pope said it wasn’t possible to judge the morality of those decisions with today’s standards. But he also refused to let time erase accountability.

“Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he said.

Leo added that 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.”

“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” he said.

The encyclical then turns toward the present. warning that the church today 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.”.

The timing of Leo’s words also echoes earlier papal moments of apology and distinction. 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 for the popes’ own role in it. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island. Senegal. the pope denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”.

Leo’s family history has also become part of the story around the apology. Genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr. says 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black. listed in census records as mulatto. Black. Creole. or a free person of color. Gates wrote in The New York Times that his family tree includes slaveholders and enslaved people.

During a visit to Angola last month. Leo prayed at a Catholic shrine located at the site of an important hub of the African slave trade during Portugal’s colonial rule. At the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima. he recalled the “sorrow and great suffering” Angolans endured for centuries. though he didn’t refer specifically to slavery.

Taken together. Leo’s encyclical places a spotlight not only on the cruelty inflicted on enslaved people. but on the institutional decisions that helped make that cruelty possible—and on the long gap before the Church condemned it outright. In his own phrasing. the Church cannot look away from what he calls the wound it carries in memory. or from the risk of repeating failure in new forms.

Pope Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas Vatican slavery apology Holy See papal bull Dum Diversas Romanus Pontifex Doctrine of Discovery digital revolution AI chips human dignity