The Catholic Church
and the slave trade
Luigi Conti
The official position of the Church towards the slave trade is the same as its
position with regard to slavery in general.
The Catholic Church's action concerning the slave trade has been both
direct and indirect.
Direct actionScientific research, when conducted in depth and without ideological prejudice,
shows that the action of the Popes and the missionaries played a decisive part
in the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade.
It is worth while remembering that Pope Calixtus I (218-22) himself bore
the stigmata of slavery.
On 7 October 1462, at the very beginning of the slave trade to Europe
Pius II rose in defence of Negroes reduced to slavery and denounced the trade
as 'magnum scelus' (a great crime), ordering the bishops to inflict ecclesiastical
sanctions on those who practised it.^1
Paul HI (1534-49), in a Brief on 29 May 1537 to Cardinal Juan de Tavera,
Archbishop of Toledo, forbade on pain of excommunication that American
Indians should be reduced to slavery or despoiled on any pretext whatsoever
of their possessions (' ne praefatos Indios quomodolibet in servitutem reidgere,
aut eos bonis suis spoliare quoquemodo praesumat').^2 A few days later, at
the beginning of June 1537, the Pope in the Bull 'Veritas Ipsa', addressed to all
Christendom, proclaimed the absolute condemnation of slavery and annulled
retrospectively all contracts providing for it, so that slaves had the right to
free themselves from their state of servitude.
Urban VIII (1623-44), in his Letter of 22 April 1639 to the Representative
of the Holy See in Portugal during its union with Spain, condemned slavery in
his turn, threatening all those who practised it with excommunication.^3
But people did not take sufficient notice of these papal documents. The
missionaries, in their letters to the Sacred Congregation 'de Propagande Fide'
(founded 6 January 1622), were always describing the dire effects of slavery on