Georgetown liturgy does penance for sale of 272 enslaved people
“The Society of Jesus prays with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry,” said Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president, of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
Father Kesicki was speaking on behalf of the Society of Jesus in the United States at the Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope at Georgetown University. The liturgy was meant as a moment of acknowledgment of an institutional sin, committed to raise money to preserve Georgetown University—the sale of 272 men, women and children who had been the “property” of the Maryland Province in 1838 to plantations in Louisiana where many of their descendants still live.
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