(OSV News) ─ The Vatican's top diplomat to the United Nations condemned modern and historical slavery ─ while countering what he called a "partial narrative" in a newly adopted U.N. resolution denouncing the transatlantic slave trade as "the gravest crime against humanity."
The resolution also called for reparations by member states to affected nations.
Archbishop Gabriele G. Caccia, the Holy See's permanent observer to the U.N., delivered a statement on the issue March 25, observed as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Inaugurated in 2008, the commemoration marks the date in 1807 when the United Kingdom legally abolished the slave trade, which saw some 12 million to 20 million Africans enslaved in various Western nations, including the U.S., over a period of four centuries.
This year, the international observance saw the passage of a resolution led by Ghana ─ one of several modern African nations from which millions of enslaved people were transited ─ declaring "the enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity."
In particular, the resolution cited the slave trade's "definitive break in world history," along with its "scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital."
The resolution passed with 123 votes in favor and three nations ─ Argentina, Israel and the U.S. -- voting against it. Another 52 member states, including the United Kingdom and the nations of the European Union, abstained.
"The Holy See unequivocally condemns slavery, including in its modern forms," said Archbishop Caccia, in his address. "The call for remembrance today is a reminder to all States of their duty to uphold historical truth and ensure legal accountability."
He quoted Pope Leo XIV's apostolic exhortation "Dilexi Te," saying, "Since apostolic times, the Church has seen the liberation of the oppressed as a sign of the Kingdom of God," with the Church continuing its "mission of liberation" through "concrete actions" across the centuries, "especially when the tragedy of slavery and imprisonment has marked entire societies."
Archbishop Caccia, whom Pope Leo recently appointed the next papal ambassador to the U.S., also noted that the U.N. resolution "contains a partial narrative," one that "regrettably, does not serve the cause of truth."
Specifically, the resolution text stated that papal bulls such as "Dum Diversas" in 1452 and "Romanus Pontifex" in 1455 had "authorized the reduction of African persons to 'perpetual slavery'" ─ part of a "progressive codification of the racialized chattel enslavement of Africans across the world."
However, in a March 2023 statement, the Vatican formally distanced itself from those two bulls, as well as the 1493 "Inter Caetera," in its official repudiation of the so-called "Doctrine of Discovery." The legal and political doctrine had historically been invoked by European colonial powers and North American governments to seize lands from Indigenous peoples.
That statement, jointly issued by the dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development, stressed that "historical research clearly demonstrates" the bulls, "written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith."
Moreover, said the dicasteries, "the Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples," with the documents' contents "manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities."
In his address, Archbishop Caccia said the Church's opposition to slavery had been articulated "in numerous papal documents."
He cited Pope Eugene IV, who in a 1435 apostolic letter "condemned the enslavement of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands and excommunicated those who refused to free them."
Pope Leo XIII, writing in 1888, quoted St. Augustine, who said that man, made in God's image, should rule "only over the brute creature" and not over fellow humans.
Archbishop Caccia affirmed that "under international law, modern slavery constitutes a crime against humanity, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population."
He added, "Therefore, the Holy See reaffirms that no one should be held in slavery or servitude, as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
The archbishop concluded his message by quoting a second passage from "Dilexi Te," saying that "the freedom that Christ gave us 'is not only interior: it manifests itself in history as love that cares for and frees us from every bond of slavery.'"
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Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
