Pope Leo XIV marked Africa Day (May 25) by publishing an historical encyclical in which he apologises for the historical role of the Catholic Church in authorising colonialisation and the horrific Transatlantic Slave Trade. In this he has gone much further than other Popes in recent memory. It opens the way for a frank discussion of this often suppressed topic and how it has shaped the racialism and injustice that continue to plague the world. In his inaugural encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas ( Magnificent Humanity) , issued on 25 May 2026 (Africa Day), Pope Leo XIV offered the first papal apology for the Holy See’s role in legitimising the transatlantic slave trade and for its failure to condemn it for centuries.
This historic apology comes just two months after the UN General Assembly passed a landmark resolution classifying the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity.
“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,” Pope Leo writes. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
Describing slavery as “a grave violation of human dignity”, the pontiff placed the issue at the heart of the Church’s modern ethical mission.
For decades, Catholics of African descent and, more broadly, humanists worldwide, have waited for the Vatican to acknowledge its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which institutionalised racial hierarchies and fundamentally transformed the world.
Pope Leo’s decision to confront the Church’s historical relationship with slavery marks a major turning point in the global conversation on memory, reconciliation and historical and reparatory justice. Authorising colonialism Alhough Christianity affirms that all people are created in the image of God and possess equal dignity, this religious ideal has often been undermined by profane alliances between the Church and political authority.
For centuries, the Catholic Church was closely tied to European political and colonial powers. In the 15th century, several pontiffs issued Papal Bulls authorising European imperialists to conquer non-Christian territories.
Charters such as Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) granted Portugal and Spain authority to expand into Africa and the Americas. These decrees enabled European rulers to claim lands, spread Christianity, and, in some cases, enslave people.
These Bulls, which formed the foundation of the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’—the framework that legitimised colonial-era land acquisitions—provided a moral and legal veil for European conquest, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade and racialised chattel slavery.
In 2023, the Vatican officially repudiated the doctrine, stating that the Papal Bulls associated with it “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples.” However, it did not formally rescind, retract, or reject the Papal Bulls themselves.
In acknowledging the 15th-century Papal Bull, Leo wrote in his encyclical: “Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to the requests of sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimise forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, including the enslavement of ‘infidels’.”
In the 20th century, several Popes apologised for Christian involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 1985, Pope John Paul II asked Africans for forgiveness for the slave trade on behalf of Christians who participated in it and later, in 2000, issued a broader request for forgiveness for historical injustices.
But no Pope had ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologised for the role that past pontiffs played in granting European sovereigns explicit authority to enslave people on other continents.
In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was the first pontiff to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888. However, this came well after numerous countries had abolished the practice, including France, which, after abolishing slavery in 1794 during the French Revolution, re-established it under Napoleon in 1802. France ultimately abolished slavery permanently, for the second time, in 1848.
Today’s Pope Leo said it isn’t possible to judge the morality of the Vatican’s decisions in previous centuries by today’s standards. “Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he writes. He then described slavery as “a wound in Christian memory”. A wound to humanity It is not merely a wound in Christian memory; it is a wound to humanity, with the cancer of racism as one of its main consequences. The modern idea of race-based hierarchy is entwined with the transatlantic slave trade and racialised chattel slavery. Slavery did not merely exploit existing prejudices; it provided the economic foundation and historical context in which racial hierarchy was systematised and normalised on a global scale.
The institution of slavery has shaped the political, social, and psychological foundations of the modern world. The Transatlantic Slave Trade displaced millions of Africans, devastated societies across the continent, accelerated the accumulation of wealth in Europe and the Americas, and entrenched racial hierarchies that persist today. The legacy of slavery continues to manifest as structural inequality, racial discrimination, economic disparity, systemic health and environmental inequalities, and social tensions across many societies.
Given that an apology without practical amendments risks appearing merely symbolic, Pope Leo’s encyclical goes beyond that. It challenges the Church to move from acknowledgement to responsibility.
Addressing the legacy of slavery requires more than expressions of regret. It demands concrete measures focused on truth, justice, education, reconciliation, and restitution.
One of the most important steps is to expand historical transparency. Scholars, especially those from Africa and the Caribbean, have long argued that full access to the Vatican Apostolic Archive is essential to understanding the Church’s historical role in slavery and colonialism.
Expanding access to those archives—which contain centuries of records, correspondence, Papal Bulls, missionary reports, and diplomatic exchanges related to colonial expansion, the Transatlantic Save Trade, and relations between European imperial powers and Africa—could illuminate how religious authorities intersected with slavery, racial hierarchy, and imperialism. Broader historical justice It could also clarify how religious institutions influenced racial hierarchies that continue to shape geopolitics and global inequalities today. Archival transparency would also enable historians to reconstruct suppressed dimensions of global history and contribute to a broader process of historical justice.
The Vatican has already demonstrated its commitment to greater openness and transparency. Since the 19th century, beginning with Pope Leo XIII, the Vatican Apostolic Archive has gradually been opened to scholars.
More recently, Pope Francis authorised access to the archives of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War, allowing researchers to examine controversial questions surrounding the Holocaust and Vatican diplomacy.
Pope Leo has also emphasised the importance of education and historical memory. In his encyclical, he warns against historical amnesia and argues that societies cannot heal from injustices if they refuse to confront the truth.
In this sense, remembering slavery is not intended to perpetuate division or guilt, but to prevent repetition. Historical memory becomes a tool for rehabilitation, greater responsibility, and accountability on the path to collective human dignity. In a sense, the Church must become an institution that promotes human dignity universally, rather than selectively.
The Pope’s intervention comes at a time when global racial tensions are intensifying amid a new era of great-power rivalry. The Vatican’s and the Catholic Church’s roles during the era of slavery were complex and often contradictory, highlighting the tangled relationships between faith, morality, and power.
These intertwined relationships continue to manifest today, as evidenced by mounting strains between morality and power, and between morality and the rule of law, including international law.
For the Vatican, upholding the dignity of all human beings requires active resistance to political power, not passive neutrality or, worse still, complicity and active support when power and morality conflict.
The broader significance of Pope Leo’s message lies in its potential to reshape the moral discourse on slavery. For centuries, many institutions avoided confronting this history, since doing so would have threatened the foundational narratives of civilisation, progress, and religious mission.
By acknowledging complicity, Pope Leo has signalled that moral credibility today must depend on transparency and accountability.
Ultimately, addressing the legacy of slavery requires a global effort that combines historical truth, institutional reforms, reparatory justice, and moral reflection. Pope Leo’s message does not resolve these debates, but it elevates them to the highest level of global ethical discourse.
His acknowledgement reminds the world that slavery was not a marginal historical injustice, but a defining crime in human history—a system whose consequences continue to shape racial tensions, international inequalities, geopolitics and the global economy.
The challenge now is whether other religious institutions, governments, and societies will move beyond symbolic gestures to substantive actions.
If Pope Leo’s call to action is taken seriously, it could mark the beginning of a broader international reckoning with slavery’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for human dignity and equality—the making of a magnificent humanity. The post Pope Leo’s brave exposure of the role of the Church in slavery and colonialism appeared first on New African Magazine .