Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery[html]
Pope Leo XIV holds the pastoral staff as he celebrates the Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)2026-05-25T09:31:15Z
VATICAN CITY (AP) — data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/pope-vatican-africa-race-082b240dc063e5e382a76bf278cb18e8">Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the role the Holy See played in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”
Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But 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.”
History’s first U.S.-born pope, data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/pope-leo-creole-roots-new-orleans-black-b5794961d9582941413fe3154b30cc87">whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” (Magnificent Humanity), which was released Monday.
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Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.
The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/pope-ai-tech-trump-vatican-anthropic-d92d0108730d146baa46da041b8523da">era of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the trans-Atlantic slave trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling, such as the unregulated labor practices in procuring rare minerals needed for AI chips.
Anthea Butler, senior fellow at the Koch History Center, Oxford University, said Leo needed to acknowledge and atone for the Catholic Church’s complicity in historic slavery if he wanted to credibly “speak to the current issues of technological enslavement.”
“For descendants of enslaved persons, this is once again a much needed apology from the pope,” said Butler, who is Black.
Black American Catholics, activists and scholars have long called for the Holy See to atone for its role in the colonial-era trade in human beings, beyond more generic apologies for the involvement of individual Christians.
“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.”
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Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, right, talks to theologian Leocadie Lushombo during the presentation of his first encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
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Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, right, talks to theologian Leocadie Lushombo during the presentation of his first encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
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Centuries of legitimizing slavery for European colonizers
The Vatican has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But a series of 15th-century directives from data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/general-news-international-news-62f2f24b782f415b9da319da30dcc16d">the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians.
In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave 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 gave the Portuguese permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”
That bull and another issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-latin-america-canada-world-news-religion-9e266815081da9f7b38710b6b6e4dec6">Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.
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 data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/vatican-indigenous-papal-bulls-pope-francis-062e39ce5f7594a81bb80d0417b3f902">Doctrine of Discovery, but it never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves. The Vatican insists 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.
