https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/the_catholic_church_against_slavery_setting_the_record_straight.html
The Catholic Church, like many ancient institutions, has a checkered past. Its record has been marred by the horrors of the Inquisition, its ambivalence towards the Nazis and the Holocaust, and its complicity in – and even cover-up of – child abuse by priests. To its credit, however, the Church – despite some lapses – has a long and consistent history of opposing slavery.
That is the thesis of The Worst of Indignities: The Catholic Church on Slavery, the latest book by Paul Kengor. A professor at Grove City College, Kengor is the bestselling author of over a dozen works, such as The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration; Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century; and Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.
Citing scriptural depictions of Jesus healing slaves, Kengor asserts that an exemplary, forward-thinking role against slavery can be traced to the very beginnings of Christianity – as early as the first century. Since then, the Church’s stance has been consistent. Papal bulls and encyclicals have condemned the abominable commerce in humans, which soared during the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1480s through much of the 19th century.
The stance continues to this day. Early in the 20th century, in an encyclical called Lacrimabili Statu (Latin for in tears), Pope Pius X described slavery as “the worst of indignities,” from which the book draws its title. Pope John Paul II, whose papacy ran from 1978 to 2005, apologized for slavery and warned against “new forms of it, often insidious.” In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he condemned slavery as “intrinsically evil,” and in a 2002 letter to Archbishop Jean-Louis Touran described human trafficking, organized prostitution, and forced labor as a “modern plague.” The current pontiff, Pope Francis, has often condemned sex trafficking, low-paid labor, organ trade, the drugs and weapons trade, war, and organized crime. In Fratelli Tutti, he described them as “scourges.”
