Pope Leo XIV's visit to the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima in Angola, a site where Portuguese colonizers forced baptisms on enslaved Africans before their shipment to the Americas, highlights the Catholic Church's historical role in the transatlantic slave trade and the systemic underpayment of labor. The Church of Our Lady of Muxima, built by Portuguese colonizers at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex, served as a central hub for the forced extraction of human labor, directly contributing to the concentration of wealth in colonial powers.
During his visit, Pope Leo XIV called for Angolans to fight the “scourge of corruption” with a “culture of justice and sharing,” while denouncing the exploitation of their “mineral-rich land and people.” This call for reform within the existing system comes as the historical record reveals the Vatican’s foundational role in legitimizing the very systems of exploitation that continue to scar the nation, still bearing the marks of a brutal, post-independence civil war.
The Church's Role in Capital Accumulation
The Portuguese colonizers, who established the Muxima shrine, were emboldened by 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized the enslavement of non-Christians. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which granted the Portuguese king and his successors the right “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and seize all possessions, including land, of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels.” This bull also explicitly permitted the Portuguese “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery,” providing a theological and legal basis for the forced labor that fueled colonial economies.
Another papal bull, Romanus Pontifex, issued 571 years ago, further solidified these permissions. These two documents formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, a theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas, facilitating the privatization of collective resources and the systematic underpayment, or outright theft, of labor. The Church’s direct involvement in the slave trade at sites like Muxima, where enslaved Africans were gathered for forced baptisms by Portuguese priests before being marched to the port of Luanda for transport, underscores its function in the apparatus of capital accumulation.
Anthea Butler, a senior fellow at the Koch Center, Oxford University, noted that many Black Catholics are Catholic due to slavery and the “Code Noir,” which mandated that enslaved people purchased by Catholic owners be baptized in the church. The Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author, confirmed that at the time of Muxima’s construction, the Portuguese were both buying enslaved people and conducting slave raids, fully utilizing their papal permissions.
Managing Contradictions, Not Confronting Roots
The Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery 3 years ago, yet it has not formally rescinded, abrogated, or rejected the original papal bulls that authorized slavery and land seizure. This symbolic concession allows the institution to appear to address historical injustices without dismantling the foundational documents that enabled centuries of wealth concentration through forced labor and colonial expansion. The Vatican insists that a later bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples should not be deprived of liberty or property, nor enslaved, but this does not negate the earlier authorizations.
Pope Leo XIII, the current pope’s namesake, was the first pope to condemn slavery itself in two encyclicals issued 138 and 136 years ago, after most countries had already abolished the practice. Kellerman stated that this pope and subsequent ones have perpetuated a “false narrative” that the Holy See was always against slavery, despite historical evidence to the contrary. St. John Paul II, during a visit to Cameroon 41 years ago, asked forgiveness for the slave trade on behalf of Christians, but not for the Holy See’s own institutional role. He denounced the injustice of slavery 34 years ago during a visit to Goree Island, Senegal, calling it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”
Pope Leo XIV’s personal heritage, including both enslaved people and slave owners among his ancestors, as revealed by genealogical research, remains unaddressed publicly by him. While Black Catholic scholars like Tia Noelle Pratt emphasize the importance of individuals telling their own stories, the institutional silence on the structural role of the Church in slavery persists. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal, expressed "pride" in the pope's roots, framing it as a link to the people he serves, rather than an opportunity to confront the Church's historical complicity in the system of slavery.
The Unaddressed Legacy of Exploitation
The current Pope’s focus on “corruption” in Angola, a nation whose people still bear the scars of a brutal civil war and whose land is exploited, diverts attention from the systemic issues rooted in the Church’s historical authorization of slavery and colonial resource extraction. Kellerman expressed hope that the visit would allow Pope Leo to learn about the slave trade’s history, noting that popes repeatedly authorized Portugal’s colonization efforts and participation in the slave trade, a fact the Vatican has never fully admitted. An apology for the popes’ role in the trade, Kellerman suggested, would be powerful, yet remains absent. The visit, framed as a moment of "healing" by some, ultimately manages the contradictions of the Church's past rather than confronting the structural foundations of its historical role in the global system of capital accumulation through forced labor.