May 26, 2026
Pope Leo XIV speaks as he meets with bishops at the Parish of our Lady of Fatima in Luanda on the eighth day of an 11-day apostolic journey to Africa, on April 20, 2026. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)
Pope Leo XIV, yesterday issued an unprecedented apology for the Vatican’s role in justifying slavery, saying 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 legitimise forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of ‘infidels’,” he wrote.
