Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Vatican's role in legitimizing
slavery
[May 26, 2026]
By NICOLE WINFIELD and PAOLO SANTALUCIA
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for
the Holy See's role 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, 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.
The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an era of
increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the slave
trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and
colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling.
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 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.”
Shannen Dee Williams, historian at the University of Dayton and author
of the 2022 history of American Black Catholic nuns, “Subversive
Habits,” welcomed the apology as a "monumental step toward the kind of
essential truth-telling and reparation that many Catholics have prayed
and worked to witness.”
“The Catholic Church has never been an innocent bystander in the history
of white supremacy," said Williams. “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.”
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
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 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 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.
Holy See late to condemn slavery, Leo says
In his encyclical, Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was
the first pope to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888, long after many
countries had abolished it. Before that, in antiquity and the Middle
Ages, church institutions and even popes — Gregory the Great — had
slaves, Kellerman said.
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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)
In acknowledging the 15th century papal bulls, Leo wrote in his
encyclical: “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.’”
Leo said it wasn't possible to judge the morality of the decisions
with today’s standards.
“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.
The pope said 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.
Leo said that 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, senior fellow at the Koch History Center, Oxford
University, said Leo needed to acknowledge and atone for the
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.
Leo’s own family history and past apologies
Kellerman, the scholar, welcomed Leo’s apology but said more needs
to be done to further acknowledge how the Catholic Church
legitimized and expanded slavery.
“Pope Leo has strengthened the moral credibility of the church with
this admission and apology today,” he 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.”
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, which was 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.”
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.
During a visit to Angola last month, Leo 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.
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Winfield reported from Middletown, Connecticut.
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