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The Catholic Church and the slave trade 267

latus Fastigio', after listing his predecessors' provisions with regard to slavery,
went on to condemn it severely in all its forms. The reference to the trade in
black slaves is clear, for it was still widely practised despite the fact that it
had been legally abolished by the Congress of Vienna.^8
Pius IX raised his voice against slavery in 1851 at the beatification of
Pierre Claver (1580-1654), a Jesuit missionary known as 'the Negroes' apostle'.
On 5 May 1888, Leo XIII, in a letter to the bishops of Brazil, congratu-
lated them warmly on what they had done to abolish slavery, and recalled the
teaching of the Church in this matter.^7
Throughout the period in which the slave trade was being carried on the
missionaries, also encouraged by the declarations of the Popes and of the Sacred
Congregation 'de Propaganda Fide', tried with all the means at their disposal
to teach slaves, both Indians and blacks, to baptize them and set them free.
The Sacred Congregation 'de Propaganda Fide' and the Charity of the Holy
Child frequently provided money for this purpose. A well-known example of
this kind of activity is the mission at Bagamoyo in East Africa.
Naturally, after the abolition of slavery among the American Indians,
the Church's activities in this field turned more towards slavery among the
blacks.
The work of the missionary bishop Cardinal Lavigerie (1825-92) for
the abolition of slavery is well known.
It should be noted that the missionaries—Dominicans, Franciscans,
Jesuits and others—who went to the New World soon found themselves
fighting against those who exploited first the Indians then the blacks. Many of
them were tortured or even killed by the settlers.
The bad example set by those owners receives a good deal of attention,
but this cannot detract from the vast and beneficent work carried out by the
Church among the Indians and the Negroes.

Indirect action

As some people nowadays deplore, the Church did not organize crusades or
stir up revolutions against the various forms and manifestations of slavery.
But the Church did act, in obedience to Christ and to the Gospel, in an indirect,
patient, constant, planned and effective manner—one which was the more
likely to succeed because it could create an environment and conditions
favourable to the abolition of the slave trade in general and of the trade in
African Negroes in particular.
The Church has always preached monogenism, and so has taught and
practised the principles of equality and fraternity between men in the universal
fatherhood of God. The Church has done this despite and in the face of times
conditioned by the human and social sciences.