Pope Leo XIV’s apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s sins of slavery is long overdue. With that apology must come atonement.
Last week, Leo apologized 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, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.”
Experts have deemed the move, which called out the church’s role in propagating the slave trade, as “historic.” It arrived in the Pope’s 43,000-word encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.”
“Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade,” The Associated Press reported. “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.’”
In the encyclical, Leo wrote: “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. For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
It could not come soon enough. As the AP story noted, “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.”
This lifelong Black Catholic bears no illusions about the sins of my church. African American Catholics have long been discriminated against and excluded by our church and community.
I have lived it in small but painful ways, as a child growing up in a segregated Chicago. In the all-Black elementary schools I attended, the nuns would favor the children with the lighter skin and straighter hair for special attention and praise. The rest of us were shamed by omission.
I recall my brother’s tales of getting singled out for corporal punishment by the white priests and brothers at his all-boys Catholic high school. And I remember how in the 1960s many “good Catholic families” fled their Chicago neighborhoods the minute a Black family moved in. Some of those good Catholics were behind racist attacks on the newcomers.
I have seen it, writ large. Today, African Americans remain far from full participants in the church’s hierarchy and power.
Leo’s apology is a start, but much is left undone. “For many Black Catholics and descendants of enslaved Africans, the apology may land as both historic and unfinished,” reports The Grio, a news website that focuses on Black politics and culture.
There is much unfinished business ahead. For starters, there is one urgent mission the pope must take on the road to atonement. He must act on his mea culpa by crusading against the racist and bigoted policies of President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has removed references and artifacts that preserve the nation’s racial history from museums and libraries. Trump’s social media feed and rhetoric overflow with racist diatribes. He nods to white supremacy and welcomes the embrace of white supremacists.
Where is my church?
“We are living in a time when self-professed Catholics are not only turning a blind eye to evil, but have elected and are supporting President Donald Trump, who is against diversity, against immigrants, against the poor, and seeks to destroy the multiracial democracy that was hard fought and won by the sweat and blood of African Americans and progressives in the United States,” Alessandra Harris wrote last year in the National Catholic Reporter.
Harris, a Black Catholic who frequently writes on racial issues, noted that 59% of white Catholics voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to PRRI, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public opinion research organization.
Trump has portrayed himself as a messianic figure. He is an egomaniac, but clearly also threatened by this pope.
The pope should take every opportunity to hammer away at Trump’s oppressive words and actions that aim to reverse the hard-fought decades of legislation, sacrifice and protest that have battled the racism and bigotry wrought by slavery.
The world’s most powerful politician is assiduously attempting to reverse racial progress and erase America’s stain of racism. The world’s most powerful religious leader can — and must — step up to condemn and combat him.
And all good Catholics should be right there with him.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune every other Wednesday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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