Pope Leo XIV issued an apology on Monday for the Catholic Church’s centuries-long delay in condemning slavery, calling it “a wound in Christian memory”.
“For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” Leo wrote in a major text that warned about “new forms of slavery” behind the digital economy.
Popes have in the past have apologised for the involvement of Christians in the slave trade.
John Paul II denounced it in 1992 before issuing a sweeping request for forgiveness for historical injustices in 2000.
Pope Francis has also repeatedly denounced contemporary forms of slavery.
But Leo’s words went further.
The US pope pointed out that the Church owned slaves until the Middle Ages and it also advised European sovereigns on how to justify the enslavement of “infidels”.
It was only in the 19th century that “a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated,” he wrote in “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), a document focused primarily on the rise of artificial intelligence.
“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.”
“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” he said.
