For centuries, the Catholic Church didn't just stay silent on slavery — it helped authorize it. On Monday (May 25), a pope finally said so out loud.

"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 XIV wrote in his first encyclical, per the Associated Press. "For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon."

Those words — delivered through his first encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," meaning "Magnificent Humanity," released Monday — mark the first time any pope has ever publicly acknowledged, let alone apologized for, the role the papacy itself played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave people.

Leo called the Vatican's centuries-long failure to condemn slavery "a wound in Christian memory." While past popes have apologized for individual Christians' involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, none had ever gone this far.

The apology carries deeply personal weight. According to genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 17 of Leo's American ancestors were Black, listed in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole or free persons of color, meaning his own family tree includes both enslaved people and slaveholders.

The historical record Leo was owning up to is damning. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, giving the Portuguese king the right to "invade, conquer, fight and subjugate" and enslave non-Christians anywhere in the world. That bull, along with a second one issued three years later, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery — the legal and theological framework that legitimized the colonial seizure of land across Africa and the Americas. Those permissions were subsequently confirmed by three more popes over the following decades.

In the encyclical, Leo also wrote: "Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery."

Black Catholic scholars responded with measured but significant praise. Historian Shannen Dee Williams of the University of Dayton called it a "monumental step toward the kind of essential truth-telling and reparation that many Catholics have prayed and worked to witness," adding, per The AP: "The Catholic Church has never been an innocent bystander in the history of white supremacy. Black Catholics have waited a long time to hear the Vatican speak honestly."

Scholar and Jesuit priest Rev. Christopher Kellerman welcomed the apology but said more work remains: "Pope Leo has strengthened the moral credibility of the church with this admission and apology today. Hopefully a future document will explain in more detail the church's involvement with slaveholding."

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