Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist, author and professor at New York University who has written about race and history for The New York Times. Her scholarship has included studying the legacy of racism in the U.S. Catholic Church and its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. She is also the author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, a book about Georgetown University and the Jesuits’ involvement in the American slave trade, published in 2023.
In Paragraph 176 of his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo XIV issues a historic apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing and participating in slavery. He writes: “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. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.” The following interview, conducted over email, has been edited for style.
In a post on X, you wrote that you were “deeply moved” by Pope Leo XIV’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing and participating in slavery. Could you elaborate on what this apology means to you?
As a journalist and a professor, I have spent nearly a decade documenting the Catholic Church’s involvement in the American slave trade and unearthing the stories of the enslaved people whose forced labor helped to sustain the church and fuel its expansion. So I’m very familiar with the Holy See’s role in legitimizing and supporting slavery.
I’m also a Black Catholic. I have held tight to my faith as I have watched the church and Catholic institutions begin to grapple with this history. There is more to be said and done, for sure. But Pope Leo is the first pope to publicly acknowledge the papacy’s complicity in the slave trade. He called it “a wound in Christian memory.” He described his deep sorrow and he asked for pardon. It is not easy to be Black and Catholic in the United States. We do not always feel welcome in our own churches. That’s why, I think, I felt so moved. I felt like: He sees us.
What further steps do you think are necessary for the Catholic Church to grapple with its involvement in racism and slavery?
I expect that Pope Leo’s apology will resonate far beyond the United States—in Latin America, where Catholic priests enslaved thousands of people, and in Africa, where Catholicism is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. I’ve spoken to people who would like to see a synod, a papal visit to the Americas, an encyclical that focuses on the church’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonization and grapples with its contemporary legacies. But I’m a journalist and an academic—not a policy maker or an advocate—so I look at this through that lens. In my view, documenting this history is critical.
My work documents how the underpinnings of the church in the United States were built by priests who relied on slave labor and slave sales to help establish the nation’s first Catholic archdiocese, the nation’s first Catholic institution of higher learning and the nation’s first Catholic seminary. But that is only part of the story.
Academic research indicates that Jesuit priests enslaved more than 5,000 people in Brazil; more than 5,000 people in Peru, where Pope Leo spent a seminal part of his ministry; more than 3,000 in Paraguay; more than a thousand in Chile; and more than a thousand in Ecuador. Did you know that? We should all know that.
And what specifically would meaningful reckoning look like for the Catholic Church in the United States?
Pope Leo’s discussion of the importance of memory when it comes to the church’s involvement in slavery really struck me. We’re living in a time when the teaching of our nation’s history of slavery is being discouraged, when museums are being told to remove or downplay this painful chapter.
Pope Leo articulates a very different view. When he describes the church’s complicity in slavery, he describes it as a wound “from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.” And he adds this: “The memory of past complicity and blindness in the face of the injustice of slavery becomes a call to vigilance.”
Moving forward—as a community of faith and as a nation—requires knowing where we’ve been. Enslaved people have been largely left out of the origin story that is traditionally told about our church. So teaching the history of Catholic slaveholding is vital. Georgetown University is already doing this, and the Jesuits have just developed a curriculum for their high schools. It should be taught in the rest of our Catholic universities and schools and in our parishes, too.
Do you think there is special significance in the fact that this apology comes from the first American-born pope, whose family tree includes both enslaved people and slaveholders?
In my mind, this makes him a uniquely American pope, one who shares the lineage of so many Americans. This painful history literally runs through his veins.
Of course, it sounds like he only learned about his African ancestry relatively recently, and we do not know how he has processed these revelations. But being an American who knows our history well—and must surely be familiar with the history of enslavement in Latin America—may give him a greater understanding of this issue’s importance.
The apology appears within an encyclical primarily concerned with human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, with Pope Leo drawing a line between historical slavery and new forms of exploitation. How do you read the decision to situate this reckoning with the past inside a document about the future?
Pope Leo did not have to grapple with this in this document. No one would have noticed if he hadn’t. So I think that it was extraordinarily thoughtful—in an encyclical focused on the dangers of technology to our humanity—to consider the ways in which the Catholic Church itself has diminished the humanity of people who were, as he reminds us, “infinitely loved by the Lord.”
Knowledge of that past allows us to be vigilant—requires us to be vigilant—in the present.
Is there anything else you would like to share about the significance of this apology or “Magnifica Humanitas”?
In his discussion of slavery, Pope Leo seems to open the door to taking action, to taking additional steps. He writes: “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.”
So my biggest question is: What’s next?
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