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Pope Leo XIV presides over Sunday Mass, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Kilamba, some 30 kilometers south of Luanda, Angola, on the seventh day of an 11-day apostolic journey to Africa.<\/p>\n
Andrew Medichini\/AP<\/p>\n
People walk by the Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026, which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV arrives in Kilamba, some 30 kilometers south of Luanda, Angola, to preside over Sunday Mass, Sunday, April 19, 2026, on the seventh day of an 11-day apostolic journey to Africa.<\/p>\n
Andrew Medichini\/AP<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV arrives in Kilamba, some 30 kilometers south of Luanda, Angola, to preside over Sunday Mass, Sunday, April 19, 2026, on the seventh day of an 11-day apostolic journey to Africa.<\/p>\n
Andrew Medichini\/AP<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV presides over Sunday Mass, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Kilamba, some 30 kilometers south of Luanda, Angola, on the seventh day of an 11-day apostolic journey to Africa.<\/p>\n
Andrew Medichini\/AP<\/p>\n
LUANDA, Angola (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for Angolans to fight the \u201cscourge of corruption\u201d with a culture of justice as he opened a poignant day in his African odyssey that will take the American pope to an epicenter of the African slave trade.<\/p>\n
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Leo celebrated Mass before an estimated 100,000 people outside the capital and again sought to encourage Angolans. He denounced the exploitation of their mineral-rich land and people, who still bear the scars of a brutal, post-independence civil war.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe wish to build a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear, and where the scourge of corruption is healed by a new culture of justice and sharing,\u201d Leo said in Kilamba, a Chinese-built development about 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside the capital.<\/p>\n
He also praised the cease-fire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah as a \u201csign of hope\u201d that he prayed would bring peace permanently to the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Later Sunday, Leo will celebrate the Rosary prayer at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, an important Catholic shrine on the edge of the Kwanza River about 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Luanda.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Church of Our Lady of Muxima, built by Portuguese colonizers at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex, became a hub in the slave trade. It was where enslaved Africans were gathered to be baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk to the port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n While it’s Angola’s most popular Catholic shrine today, its history is emblematic of the Catholic Church\u2019s role in the slave trade, the forced baptisms of enslaved people and what some scholars say is the Holy See\u2019s continued refusal to fully acknowledge it and atone for it.<\/p>\n The visit is particularly significant because the Creole ancestors of the first U.S.-born pope include enslaved people and slave owners, according to genealogical research.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Black Catholics, Pope Leo\u2019s visit to the Muxima shrine is an important moment of healing,\u201d said Anthea Butler, senior fellow at the Koch Center, Oxford University.<\/p>\n She noted that many Black Catholics are Catholic because of slavery and the \u201cCode Noir,\u201d which she said required slaves purchased by Catholic owners to be baptized in the church.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cOthers were already Catholic when they were trafficked from Angola to slave holding colonies,\u201d said Butler, a Black Catholic scholar whose maternal family hails from Louisiana, where the pope\u2019s ancestors also had their roots.<\/p>\n The role of papal bulls in the slave trade<\/p>\n Angola\u2019s Portuguese colonizers were emboldened by 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized them to enslave non-Christians.<\/p>\n In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right \u201cto invade, conquer, fight and subjugate\u201d and take all possessions \u2014 including land \u2014 of \u201cSaracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ\u201d anywhere, said the Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author of \u201cAll Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The bull also gave the Portuguese permission \u201cto reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n That bull and another issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.<\/p>\n The Vatican in 2023 formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, but it never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves. The Vatican insists that a later bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples shouldn\u2019t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and were not to be enslaved.<\/p>\n Kellerman recalled that most of the 12.5 million Africans who were direct victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were sold into slavery by other Africans and were not captured by Europeans.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThat being said, at the time of the building of Muxima, the Portuguese were doing both \u2014 buying enslaved people and colonizing\/slave raiding. So they were fully using their papal permissions during this time,\u201d he said in emailed comments to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n He said the first pope to condemn slavery itself was Pope Leo XIII, the current pope\u2019s namesake and inspiration, in two encyclicals in 1888 and 1890, after most countries had already abolished slavery. But Kellerman said that pope and others since have continued to perpetuate the \u201cfalse narrative\u201d that the Holy See was always against slavery, when the historical record says otherwise.<\/p>\n While Leo’s visit to Muxima was in honor of its role as a shrine, Kellerman said he hoped that the visit would also give Leo a chance to learn about the history of the slave trade.<\/p>\n \u201cThe popes repeatedly authorized Portugal\u2019s colonization efforts in Africa and Portuguese participation in the slave trade, but the Vatican has never fully admitted this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be so powerful if at some point Pope Leo were to apologize for the popes\u2019 role in the trade.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n During a 1985 visit to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked forgiveness of Africans for the slave trade on behalf of Christians who participated in it, albeit not for the Holy See’s own role. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, the largest slave-trading center in West Africa, he denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a \u201ctragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n Leo\u2019s own personal history a point of reflection<\/p>\n According to genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black, listed in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole or a free person of color. His family tree includes slaveholders and enslaved people, Gates reported in an essay in the New York Times.<\/p>\n Gates, a Harvard University professor who hosts the popular PBS documentary series \u201cFinding Your Roots,\u201d presented his research to Leo during a July 5 audience at the Vatican. According to a report of their meeting in The Harvard Gazette, \u201cThe pope asked about ancestors, both Black and white, who were enslavers.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Leo has not spoken publicly about his family heritage or the Gates research, and some Black Catholic scholars are hesitant to impose on him a narrative about his identity that he himself has not yet addressed publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important that we tell our own stories,\u201d said Tia Noelle Pratt, a sociologist of religion and professor at Villanova University, the pope\u2019s alma mater.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t heard anything from him about what he thinks about it, and so to impose anything on him, I think would be completely inappropriate,\u201d said Pratt, author of \u201cFaithful and Devoted: Racism and Identity in the African-American Catholic Experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the retired archbishop of Washington and the first African American cardinal, said he facilitated the Gates-Leo encounter and was \u201cdelighted\u201d to have done so.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of the things that I think for many African Americans and people of color, they identify with great pride the pope has roots in our own heritage,\u201d Gregory told AP. \u201cAnd I think he\u2019s happy about that too, because it\u2019s another link to the people that he tries to serve and is called to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776607692_604_rawImage.jpg\" "\\"#\\"")
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