Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Vatican's role in legitimizing slavery

Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the Holy See's role in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican's record a "wound in Christian memory." Past popes have apologized for Christians' involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But no pope had ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave "infidels." ... In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right "to...