By Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko <\/p>\n
This last week of May 2026 has entered the history book as the one in which the head of the over 2 billion membership Roman Catholic Church made landmark policies on two key issues that dominate human history and constitute cogs in achieving the fullest development of humanity: slavery and the emerging science of artificial intelligence or AI in a short form. <\/p>\n
For us in Nigeria and the black continent of Africa, the theme of slavery is something we are very passionate about going by the vast amount of consequences of this practice by the foreign forces who invaded our continent and seize all of the homelands of the different communities of the black world and converted our ancestors into captives through slave trade and colonisation of these nation states for nearly one hundred years. <\/p>\n
The truth is that nearly a hundred years after the end of slavery, contemporary Africans are still asking questions to ascertain why their forefathers were subjected to the indignity of slavery by the White colonial slave drivers. <\/p>\n
Some Africans have canvassed the payment of compensations\/reparations by the western societies that benefitted enormously from the enslavement of our forefathers. <\/p>\n
The Church was also blamed for sanctioning the practice. This is what the current hierarchy of the World’s most populous religious body has decided to apologise for. <\/p>\n
In the same week, the Pope spoke too about the dangers to humanity by the fast development science of Artificial intelligence in the areas of losing opportunities by man to work as man but instead the robots created and infused with artificial intelligence could be positioned to take over some of the critical intellectual tasks that human beings are now doing and if this happens, then humanity is in a state of catastrophic end. This is because if artificially built robots are activated to take over the basic jobs that man as man is positioned to do, what then is the essence of living? Life without work is not worth living. <\/p>\n
This is what the Pope is calling attention to and the World must listen, the Scientific community must be regulated to slow it down on the evolution of AI. Here is how the two key developments unfolded in the Vatican city. The Pope made the policy statement in his first ever social Encyclical as reported by the Vatican News.<\/p>\n
At the presentation of his first social encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV appealed for artificial intelligence to be placed firmly at the service of humanity, warning against technologies that foster domination, exclusion and war.
\nAddressing participants gathered in the Synod Hall on Monday for the presentation of the encyclical, the Pope described the current technological revolution as an \u201cepochal turning point\u201d comparable to the upheaval confronted by Pope Leo XIII during the Industrial Revolution.
\n\u201cArtificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects decisions that shape human coexistence, he said, noting that it is also \u201cdramatically changing how war is waged.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new \u201cRerum Novarum\u201d moment
\nDrawing a direct parallel with Pope Leo XIII\u2019s landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV said the Church today is likewise called to interpret the \u201cnew things\u201d of the age in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person.
\nHe explained that Magnifica Humanitas emerged from extensive listening to scientists, engineers, educators, political leaders and families concerned about the future of younger generations. At the same time, he said he had heard \u201cvery troubling voices\u201d regarding autonomous weapons systems and algorithms capable of denying access to healthcare, employment or security based on unjust and prejudiced data.
\nFrom that process of discernment, the Pope said, came a conviction expressed clearly in the encyclical: \u201cartificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.\u201d
\nAcknowledging the forcefulness of the phrase, Pope Leo XIV said the gravity of the present moment requires words capable of \u201cawakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Technology and moral responsibility:
\nRecalling the Church\u2019s longstanding support for nuclear disarmament, the Pope said every great technological power must be accompanied by moral discernment and public accountability.
\n\u201cIn a similar sense, artificial intelligence now demands to be \u2018disarmed,\u2019 freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion or death,\u201d he said.
\nQuoting Saint Paul\u2019s exhortation to \u201ckeep awake\u201d (1 Thess 5:6), the Holy Father warned that peace itself is endangered whenever technology weakens humanity\u2019s critical sense and moral vigilance.
\nYet the Pope stressed that the task before humanity is not merely to restrain dangerous technologies, but also to build a more just future together.
\n\u201cNo one rebuilds alone\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his years as a missionary in Peru, Pope Leo XIV recalled the devastation caused by torrential rains and floods in 2017, saying he learned there that rebuilding involves far more than restoring physical structures.
\n\u201cIt means repairing bonds, restoring trust, and reawakening hope in the future,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cno one rebuilds alone.\u201d
\nThe Pope then turned to the biblical figure of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, presenting the image as a model for the ethical construction of the digital age.
\n\u201cArtificial intelligence can be a construction site of history from within a horizon of communion, in which technical progress learns to serve human life,\u201d he said.
\nThe human person at the centre
\nCiting Saint Paul VI\u2019s teaching that authentic development concerns \u201ceach man and the whole man,\u201d Pope Leo XIV insisted that no one must be excluded from digital transformation and that human beings can never be reduced to \u201cproductivity,\u201d \u201ccognitive performance,\u201d or \u201cmere data.\u201d
\n\u201cThe person bears within him – or herself – a freedom, an interiority and a vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block,\u201d he said.
\nThe Holy Father called for cooperation among nations, institutions, technology developers, and those most affected by technological systems in order to ensure that advances in artificial intelligence benefit the entire human family rather than \u201ca privileged few.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u201ccivilisation of love\u201d:
\nPope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Church\u2019s desire to contribute \u201cwith humility and frankness\u201d to global conversations on artificial intelligence, not by offering technical expertise, but by safeguarding a vision of the human person rooted in dignity, conscience and openness to God.
\nInviting all people to become \u201cartisans of hope,\u201d the Pope urged believers and non-believers alike to work together toward \u201ca more human and fraternal society.\u201d
\nEntrusting the initiative to the Virgin Mary, whose Magnificat \u201csings of the greatness of God who uplifts the lowly,\u201d the Holy Father prayed that the \u201ccivilisation of love\u201d envisioned by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II may continue to mature in history.<\/p>\n
Corollary, the Holy Father Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology for Holy See’s own role in legitimizing slavery:<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the role the Holy See itself played in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”<\/p>\n
Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But no pope has ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes themselves played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”<\/p>\n
History’s first U.S.-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, (“Magnificent Humanity”), which was released Monday.<\/p>\n
The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an era of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the trans-Atlantic slave trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling, such as the unregulated labor required to procure rare minerals needed for AI chips.<\/p>\n
In doing so, Leo responded to decades of calls by Black American Catholics, activists and scholars for the Holy See to atone for its own role in the colonial-era trade in human beings.<\/p>\n
It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo wrote. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”<\/p>\n
Centuries of legitimizing slavery for European colonizers:<\/p>\n
The Vatican has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But a series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and 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 “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and take all possessions \u2014 including land \u2014 of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ” anywhere.<\/p>\n
The bull also gave the Portuguese permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”<\/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
Nicholas V’s permissions to the Portuguese were confirmed or renewed by Pope Callixtus III in 1456, Pope Sixtus IV in 1481, and Pope Leo X in 1514, according to the Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church.”<\/p>\n
Spanish kings received the rights for the Americas.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Vatican 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’t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and weren’t to be enslaved.<\/p>\n
Holy See late to condemn slavery, Leo says<\/p>\n
In his encyclical, Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII was the first pope to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888, though that was long after many countries had already abolished it. Before that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, even church institutions had slaves.<\/p>\n
In acknowledging the Holy See’s own role and the 15th-century papal bulls, Leo wrote in his encyclical: “Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to the requests of sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, including the enslavement of ‘infidels.'”<\/p>\n
Leo said that it wasn’t possible to judge the morality of the decisions with today’s standards.<\/p>\n
“Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he said.<\/p>\n
The pope said that the church has long affirmed the dignity of every human being as the basis of its doctrine, “even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.”<\/p>\n
“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” he said.<\/p>\n
Leo said that the church today must firmly condemn all forms of trafficking related to the digital technological revolution “if we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future for having failed to respect the treasure of human dignity that is required by our faith.”<\/p>\n
Leo’s own family history and past apologies:<\/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, but not for the popes’ own role in it. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, which was the largest slave-trading center in West Africa, he denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”<\/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 wrote in The New York Times.<\/p>\n
During a visit to Angola last month, Leo prayed at a Catholic shrine located at the site of an important hub of the African slave trade during Portugal’s colonial rule. While at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, Leo recalled the “sorrow and great suffering” Angolans endured for centuries, but he didn’t refer specifically to slavery.
\nSource: Vatican News.<\/p>\n
*Why do we need reparations for slavery and colonialism given that they happened so long ago?*<\/p>\n
Slavery, the slave trade and colonialism are not only harms of the past. For racialised people, including Indigenous Peoples, the legacies of slavery, the slave trade and colonialism persist in present day structures of racial discrimination, subordination and inequality.<\/p>\n
These legacies remain among the primary barriers to the full enjoyment of human rights by racialised people including Indigenous Peoples throughout the world today. The historical harms of slavery and colonialism are therefore inextricably linked to present racial injustices, global inequality and human rights violations. <\/p>\n
There is growing recognition by international human rights bodies and mechanisms that the legacies of slavery, including the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism require urgent reparatory justice.<\/p>\n
*What atrocities were committed under European colonial rule?*<\/p>\n
It is estimated that between 25 million and 30 million people were violently uprooted from Africa for enslavement throughout history. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, approximately 12.5 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and shipped to colonies in the Americas in what has come to be known as the \u201ctransatlantic slave trade.\u201d Of those 12.5 million enslaved Africans, it is estimated that close to 2 million lost their lives during the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
The trade in enslaved people did not only affect the African and American continents. For example, between 1500 and 1850, Europeans were also involved, directly or indirectly, in trading between 953,900 to 1,275,900 enslaved persons \u201cwithin an oceanic world that stretched from eastern Africa and Madagascar to the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos\u201d.<\/p>\n
The colonial empires built by European states between the 15th and 20th centuries extended across nearly 80% of the entire globe. This means that two-thirds of the membership of the United Nations, approximately 127 out of 193 Member States, were subject to European colonial rule at some point in history. In many cases, this rule lasted for over 250 years. Among the many harms of colonialism was the denial of self-determination and dispossession of land from Indigenous populations, the imposition of colonial borders, plunder of natural resources, the exploitation of labor of enslaved and colonized peoples, and the destruction of local cultures, languages and knowledge systems. Source: amnesty international.<\/p>\n
I think both the Holy Father, Amnesty international and other prominent campaigners who have consistently advocated for a lasting apology for slavery and payment of compensations by Europeans and the USA, are right. My proposal is that the United Nations, the World Bank and other international organisations should hold a world Forum on slavery and agree on the way forward to actualize the goal of the agitation by Africans for the payment of reparations to the Afrucan nations for slavery so the world brings to an end this inglorious chapter of human history. Thank you Holy Father for your forthrightness and for the massive show of honesty and humility in tendering this unreserved apology and for adding your profoundly eminent voice to call for scientists to be regulated in their development and advancements of Artificial intelligence. This is the agenda of the global human society. We must have our unconditional support for this Papsl.advocacy of justice and transparency. <\/p>\n
*EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO is the founder of HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA). HE is a journalist and author of three books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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