Pope apologizes for Vatican’s role in supporting slavery.

Pope Leo XIV issued an unprecedented apology yesterday for the Vatican’s role in justifying slavery, describing the delayed condemnation of the practice as “a wound in Christian memory.”

In a comprehensive statement, the pope warned of the risk of “new forms of slavery” emerging within the digital economy. He noted that church institutions owned slaves until the Middle Ages and that, during the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, at the behest of sovereigns, intervened on several occasions to regulate and legitimize various forms of subjugation, including the enslavement of “infidels.”

He added that only in the 19th century did the Church articulate a “formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery,” as outlined in the text titled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity). “For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” Pope Leo wrote.

Previous popes have also apologized for Christian involvement in the slave trade. John Paul II denounced slavery in 1992 and issued a sweeping request for forgiveness for historical injustices in 2000. Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned contemporary forms of slavery.

Leo’s apology goes further by acknowledging the Vatican’s direct involvement in legitimizing slavery. “It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet, neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he said. “This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.”

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