Pope Leo XIV on Monday issued an unprecedented apology for the Vatican’s role in justifying slavery and said the delay in condemning the practice was “a wound in Christian memory”.
In a major text warning about the risk of “new forms of slavery” behind the digital economy, Leo said Church institutions owned slaves until the Middle Ages.
“In the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of ‘infidels’,” he wrote.
It was only in the 19th century that “a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated,” he said in the text, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity).
“For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” Leo wrote.
