Catholic priests pledged $ 100 million in reparations for descendants of slaves

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One of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church is penance, or reconciliation, performed to seek forgiveness for wrongdoing. An order of Jesuit priests seeks to fulfill this sacrament by addressing one of the Church’s greatest sins: participating in black slavery. According to a report by The New York Times, the Catholic Order promises to raise $ 100 million, which will be distributed to the descendants of people once enslaved by the church.

While this decision does not come directly from the Vatican, it represents the most significant effort to date by the Roman Catholic Church to atone for its participation in the slave trade. Speak Times, the money will go to the establishment of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, which will distribute funds to descendants of slaves who were bought and sold by Jesuit priests in 1838, a horrific trade that was done in order to ensure the funding from Georgetown University. Descendants have lobbied the church for reparations since learning their ancestors had been enslaved and sold, a revelation made by a 2016 Times investigation.

Roman Catholic teaching condemned forms of slavery dating back to 1435, but the church did not always follow its own orthodoxy. In 1517, the first known case of the transatlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas was said to have been initiated by Bishop Las Casas, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and was authorized by Charles V, the Holy Emperor Roman at the time.

Jonathan Chism, assistant professor of history at the University of Houston-Downtown, said Amsterdam News in 2018 that the Catholic Church, with its power concentrated largely in Europe, rationalized the slave trade by saying to itself that they “Christianized and civilized their African captors”, whom they saw as irreligious and primitive. “They were motivated by missionary motivations and impulses,” he said. Of course, these motives and impulses were also racist.

While many church leaders would eventually speak out against slavery, the church still has to consider its involvement in trade, as well as its in the perpetuation of the mistreatment of blacks in the decades following the abolition of slavery in the United States. the concerns of black parishioners, who were often forced to separate from white worshipers – a split that many churches have tried to justify with passages from the Bible. Even in 1948, only 6% of black Christians in the United States were part of integrated denominations.

The creation of a foundation to support the descendants of slaves traded by the Jesuits is a necessary step towards righting historic wrongs. But it’s a small gesture in the grand scheme of things. The Roman Catholic Church has undeniably played an important role in inciting and promoting slavery and racial disparities for centuries. It also has a heinous role in the dehumanization of LGBTQ + people and an infamous story of child abuse. To compensate for all of this will require a concentrated, long-term effort that is well over $ 100 million.

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