Knights of Peter Claver express ‘full support’ for Pope Leo slavery apology

(OSV News) — The Knights of Peter Claver, one of the Catholic Church’s largest historically Black Catholic lay fraternal organizations, said it “offers its full support” for Pope Leo XIV’s acknowledgment of the Church’s role in slavery.

The apology was included in “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” the pope’s first encyclical.

The highly anticipated document, signed by the pope on May 15 and released May 25, invoked the wisdom of the Church’s social teaching — which articulates the means of building a just society and living out holiness in modern life — as a framework for shaping AI amid rapid technological advances, a fractured global order and accelerating threats to human dignity.

Warning against AI’s potential to cause “new forms of slavery” — especially by facilitating human trafficking and exploiting laborers, including children, in mining resource minerals for the technology — Pope Leo lamented “the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery.”

That delay spanned some 18 centuries, he noted, describing it as “a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.”

The transatlantic slave trade saw some 12 million to 20 million Africans enslaved in various Western nations, including the U.S., over a period of four centuries.

In section 176 of the encyclical, Pope Leo noted that “in antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves,” adding that the Vatican had, in the early modern period, “intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of ‘infidels.'”

But, said the pope, “it was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII,” whose papacy saw the foundations laid for Catholic social teaching.

In his 1888 encyclical “In Plurimis,” Pope Leo XIII, quoting St. Augustine, declared that God, having created man in his image, “wished that he should rule only over the brute creation; that he should be the master, not of men, but of beasts.”

Writing in his 1890 encyclical “Catholicae Ecclesiae,” Pope Leo XIII stated, “We have taken every occasion to openly condemn this gloomy plague of slavery,” noting that “slavery opposes religion and human dignity.”

His predecessor’s 19th-century recognition of slavery’s evil “offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards,” said Pope Leo XIV.

“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 said in his new encyclical. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”

“The Holy Father’s words reflect a spirit of humility, truth, and pastoral leadership that is not only essential for healing and reconciliation, but also embodies the ministry of our patron, Saint Peter Claver,” said Supreme Knight Christopher Pichon Sr., CEO of the Knights of Peter Claver, in a May 26 statement provided to OSV News.

The organization’s patron, a 17th-century Jesuit missionary, spent some four decades ministering to slaves in Cartagena (now in modern-day Colombia), which at the time was South America’s main slave market. The saint — who dubbed himself “the slave of the slaves forever” — provided pastoral care to hundreds of thousands of enslaved persons, while advocating for their dignity and humane treatment. Canonized in 1888 by Pope Leo XIII, St. Peter Claver is a patron of the enslaved.

“As an organization rooted in faith, justice, and the lived experience of Black Catholics, we recognize the significance of this historic acknowledgment,” said Pichon. “We affirm that acknowledging past wrongs is an important step toward strengthening the Church’s witness to the dignity of every human person.”

Pichon added that Pope Leo’s “statement reminds us all of our shared responsibility to confront both past and present injustice with honesty, compassion, and faith.”

He said the Knights of Peter Claver remain “committed to walking in unity with the Holy Father and the Church as we continue to promote justice, healing, and the Gospel message of human dignity for all.”

In a March 2023 statement, the Vatican formally distanced itself from three papal bulls — “Dum Diversas,” 1452; “Romanus Pontifex,” 1455; and “Inter Caetera,” 1493″ — argued to have supported the development of the slave trade and the now-repudiated “Doctrine of Discovery.”

That statement, jointly issued by the dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development, stressed that “historical research clearly demonstrates” the bulls, “written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”

In his encyclical, Pope Leo said the “memory of past complicity and blindness in the face of the injustice of slavery becomes a call to vigilance.”

“What we have learned must be translated into discernment and responsibility in the present,” said Pope Leo.

He added, “If we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future for having failed to respect the treasure of human dignity that is required by our faith, it falls to us today to denounce, clearly and firmly, trafficking in its many forms and, together with all who are committed to this cause, to support concrete efforts of prevention, protection, liberation and rehabilitation.”

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