Racism
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