Showing posts from June, 2020


Racism in  Catholic history, June 24 Guest columnist John Chuchman thought a bit about Catholic Church history. In the 15th century,  the Catholic Church became the first global institution  to declare that Black lives did not matter.  In a series of papal bulls  beginning with Pope Nicholas V's Dum Diversas (1452)  and including Pope Alexander VI's Inter Caetera (1493),  the church not only authorized the perpetual enslavement of Africans  and the seizure of non-Christian lands,  but morally sanctioned the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  This trade forcibly transported  at least 12.5 million enslaved African men, women and children  to the Americas and Europe  to enrich European and Catholic coffers.  It also caused the deaths of tens of millions of Africans and Native Americans over nearly four centuries. In the land area that became the United States,  the Catholic Church introduced African slavery in the 16th cent