Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Holy See’s own role in legitimizing slavery

Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the role the Holy See itself 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.

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

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Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But no pope has ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes themselves 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.