The Catholic Church and slavery have a long and complicated history. Slavery was practiced and accepted by many cultures and religions around the world throughout history, including in ancient Rome. Passages in the Old Testament sanctioned forms of temporal slavery for Israelites as a means to repay a debt. Slaves, captured in war or purchased, and their children were enslaved for life.; see also pp. 23–26 for different forms of slavery and how they compared with other nations. After Christianity was legalized under the Roman empire, sentiment grew that many kinds of slavery were incompatible with Christian justice. Views ranged from rejecting all forms of slavery to accepting slavery subject to certain restrictions (Thomas Aquinas). The Christian West almost entirely enforced that a free Christian could not be enslaved, for example as a captive in war. However, this was not consistently applied throughout history. The Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of orders of monks such as the Mercedarians who focused on ransoming Christian slaves. By the end of the medieval period, enslavement of Christians had been largely abolished throughout Europe, although enslavement of non-Christians remained permissible and was revived in Spain and Portugal. Slavery remained a subject of debate within the Church for centuries, with several Popes issuing bulls on the issue, such as Sublimis Deus.
By the 1800s, the Church reached relative consensus in favor of condemning chattel slavery and praising its abolition.
History After 313, when Constantine legalized Christianity within the Roman Empire, Church teachings concerning charity and justice began influencing Roman laws and policies. Pope Callixtus I (bishop of Rome 218–222) was a slave in his youth. Slavery decreased with multiple abolition movements in the late 5th century.
Catholic clergy, religious orders, and popes owned slaves, and the naval galleys of the Papal States used captured Muslim galley slaves in particular. Some Catholic saints appeared to have owned slaves, including Philemon of Colossae, Gregory of Tours and Marie-Marguerite d'Youville. Catholic teaching began, however, to turn against slavery from 1435.
While the Age of Discovery greatly increased the number of slaves owned by Christians, the response of the clergy, under strong political pressures, was ineffective in preventing the establishment of slave-owning societies in the colonies of Catholic countries. Earlier Papal bulls, such as Pope Nicholas V's Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1454) were used to justify enslavement during this era.
An early shipment of Black Africans during the transatlantic slave trade was initiated at the request of Bishop Las Casas and authorized by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1517. However, Las Casas later rejected all forms of "unjust" slavery and became known as the protector of Indian rights.
Multiple popes issued papal bulls condemning mistreatment of Native Americans and "unjust" enslavement ("just" enslavement was an accepted form of punishment); however, these were largely ignored. Nonetheless, Catholic missionaries such as the Jesuits worked to alleviate the suffering of Native American slaves. Debate about the morality of slavery continued throughout this period. Some books critical of slavery were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Holy Office between 1573 and 1826. Capuchin missionaries were excommunicated for calling for the emancipation of black slaves in the Americas, although they were reinstated when the Holy Office under Pope Innocent XI sided with them rather than the bishop who had excommunicated them.
Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, the Church did missionary work in the Americas, targeting both slave and non-slave. On 22 December 1741, Pope Benedict XIV promulgated the papal bull Immensa Pastorum Principis against the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and other countries. Pope Gregory XVI in his 1839 bull In supremo apostolatus also condemned slavery as contrary to human dignity. In 1866, the Holy Office of Pope Pius IX stated that, subject to conditions, it was not against divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, or exchanged. Pope Leo XIII in 1888 wrote to the bishops of Brazil setting forth the position of the Church on slavery: he condemned the cruelties of the slave-trade and commended the abolition of slavery in the region.
In 1995, Pope John Paul II repeated the condemnation of "infamies", including slavery, issued by the Second Vatican Council: In 2026, Pope Leo XIV, through his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, "sincerely ask for pardon" for the Church's delay in denouncing "the scourge of slavery" throughout history:
Catholic teaching An explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine used to teach the Catholic Faith in North America from 1885 to 1960 details the following explanation of the second sorrowful mystery of the rosary:
(2) The scourging of Our Lord at the pillar. This also has been explained. What terrible cruelty existed in the world before Christianity ! In our times the brute beasts have more protection from cruel treatment than the pagan slaves had then. The Church came to their assistance. It taught that all men are God's children, that slaves as well as masters were redeemed by Jesus Christ, and that masters must be kind and just to their slaves. Many converts from paganism through love for Our Lord and this teaching of the Church, granted liberty to their slaves; and thus as civilization spread with the teaching of Christianity, slavery ceased to exist. It was not in the power of the Church, however, to abolish slavery everywhere, but she did it as soon as she could. Even at present she is fighting hard to protect the poor negroes of Africa against it, or at least to moderate its cruelty.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1994 set out the official position:
The Seventh Commandment forbids acts or enterprises that .... lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother .... both in the flesh and in the Lord."Catechism of the Catholic Church #2414
Development Beginning in the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery reflected significant internal conflict and endured dramatic change. Ultimately, the concept of slavery as private property was condemned by the Church, which classified it as the theft of human rights, a concept of classical liberalism that dominated most of the Western world beginning in the 19th century.
Definitions The Church at times distinguished between various forms and elements of "slavery". These considered the making of slaves, or "new enslavement", trafficking and trading, and ownership. A distinction was made between "just" and "unjust" slavery, and whether a particular slave was "justly" or "unjustly" kept in that condition might depend on religious status. The church long accepted the right to sell oneself or one's children into slavery, at times fairly common, or to be sentenced to slavery as a criminal punishment. Slavery was long regarded as a matter of secular law.
The Church contrasted this with "just servitude", making a metaphysical distinction between owning a person as an object, and owning that person's work product. A person could be bought sold or exchanged as a form of "just servitude" subject to certain conditions.Holy Office decree 1866, ref Debt slavery was typically a different matter legally under both pre-Christian and Christian legal systems; it might be for a specific period, and the owner typically did not have the right to sell the slave without his/her agreement, along with other restrictions. This might be better termed indentured labour. Ancient legal systems included those in the Old Testament, which also typically distinguished between native and foreign slaves, with better protection for the former. This distinction was applied to Christian versus non-Christian slaves, sometimes with an origin component, for example in Anglo-Saxon laws. It remained important in Christian thinking and legal systems, in particular for new enslavements. The Christian church treated slaves as persons, and they were allowed to be baptised, marry, and to be ordained as pastors. This tended to be reflected in slavery laws of Catholic countries, French slaves, for example, were allowed to marry other slaves or free people, though neither baptism nor marriage emancipated them—an issue in the French legal case of Jean Boucaux (1737).
Catholic layman Cochin, reviewing the moral arguments that underpinned Church teaching and definitions relating to "just" slavery wrote in 1861:They teach concerning slavery what was taught yesterday and the day before, but what no priest or layman believes any longer today. They teach that slavery is not unlawful, firstly, when it proceeds from a legitimate war or voluntary sale; secondly, provided it respects the soul, body, family, and instruction of the slave. But I challenge anyone to show me today, throughout all Christianity, a single slave who has become such as a prisoner of war or through voluntary sale, to say nothing of the manner in which he is treated.In 1530 the first judges in Audiencia, New Spain, contrasted servitude as practised in Christian Europe with that of the Indians in a letter to Charles V: 'they [Indians] treat slaves as relations, while the Christians treat them as dogs'.
Slavery in the New Testament
In several Pauline epistles, and the First Epistle of Peter, slaves (the Greek word used, δοῦλοι, is ambiguous, also used to mean servant), are admonished to obey their masters, as to the Lord, and not to men; however Masters were told to serve their slaves "in the same way" and "even better" as "brothers", to not threaten them as God is their Master as well. Slaves who are treated wrongly and unjustly are likened to the wrongs that Christ unjustly suffered, and Masters are told that God "shows no favoritism" and that "anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong."
The Epistle to Philemon is an important text in regard to slavery; it was used by pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists. In the epistle, Paul writes that he is returning Onesimus, a fugitive slave, to his master Philemon; Paul also entreats Philemon to regard Onesimus as a beloved brother in Christ, rather than as a slave. Cardinal Dulles points out that, "while discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, [Paul] does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had." However, in his homilies on Philemon, Chrysostom opposes unfair and unjust forms of slavery by stating that those who own slaves are to passionately love their slaves with the very Love of Christ for humanity: "this ... is the glory of a Master, to have grateful slaves. And this is the glory of a Master, that He should thus love His slaves ... Let us therefore be stricken with awe at this so great love of Christ. Let us be inflamed with this love-potion. Though a man be low and mean, yet if we hear that he loves us, we are above all things warmed with love towards him, and honor him exceedingly. And do we then love? And when our Master loves us so much, we are not excited?"
In the First Epistle to Timothy, slave traders are condemned, and listed among the sinful and lawbreakers. The First Epistle to the Corinthians describes lawful manumission as ideal for slaves.
Early Christianity