Pope Leo XIV Apologizes for the Church’s Role in Authorizing Slavery

On May 25, 2026 — Memorial Day — Pope Leo XIV made history. In his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), the first American-born pope issued the most explicit apology any pope has ever delivered for the Catholic Church’s direct role in authorizing, legitimizing, and expanding the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He called it “a wound in Christian memory” and said plainly: “In the name of the Church, I earnestly seek forgiveness.”

• This is unprecedented in Catholic history — while previous popes expressed regret over Christians’ participation in the slave trade, no pope had ever explicitly acknowledged that the Holy See itself — through specific papal decrees — granted European monarchs the legal authority to dominate, subjugate, and enslave non-Christians. Pope Leo XIV named that directly and apologized for it

• The specific papal bull at the center of the apology authorized the Portuguese to “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery” — this was official Church doctrine, not fringe behavior. The Church, Leo acknowledged, owned its own enslaved people during the Middle Ages, and only issued a “formal, absolute, universal condemnation of slavery” as late as the 19th century under Pope Leo XIII — after centuries of what the current pope described as “prolonged inconsistency in teachings and practices”

• Pope Leo XIV’s personal biography makes this moment even more striking — as the first American-born pope, his own family background includes both enslaved people and slave owners. This is not an abstract apology from a distant European institution. This is a man whose own bloodline was shaped by the very sin he is apologizing for

• The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is primarily focused on artificial intelligence and the safeguarding of human dignity in the technological age — but the slavery apology is embedded within it as a foundational moral statement. The framing is deliberate: you cannot talk about the future of human dignity without reckoning with the past destruction of it

• This directly validates the argument Professor PLO Lumumba made just days earlier — that the Catholic Church owes an apology as one of the largest landowners in Africa and a direct beneficiary of colonization and slavery. The Anglican Church already acknowledged its role. Barclays Bank acknowledged its role. Now the Vatican has acknowledged its role. Britain’s government remains the most powerful holdout — and its refusal now stands in even starker contrast.

“In the name of the Church, I earnestly seek forgiveness for this.”

“It took the Church centuries to fully acknowledge the scourge of slavery as being at odds with human dignity.”

“A wound in Christian memory.”

                      — Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, May 25, 2026