There is a lot of talk now about reparations following the March 25th UN Resolution A/80/L.48 declaring the trans-Atlantic enslavement of African peoples as the “gravest crime against humanity" and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical letter entitled Magnifica Humanitas which many people are claiming is an apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the gravest crime against humanity.
After reading paragraph 176 of the encyclical, I have, however, declared that Pope Leo XIV did not apologize for slavery. He expressed “sorrow” and asked for a “pardon”. That is not an apology and neither is the manner in which he went about it. He did not call representatives of the Victims to the Holy See nor respond to those making the petition. Couching such an apology for the gravest crime against humanity in one paragraph in a 245-page document speaks volumes and is an insult to all African ancestors, all African people living on earth today, and all those African people yet to be born. It is instructive to take a look at the following chronology and understand why words and concepts matter.
On June 25, 2019, I published Volume 3 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain. A chapter entitled The Sovereign Claim of Guine Against Slavery discussed the contest of laws existing between sovereign powers at the moment when my ancestors came into contact with European Christians and revealed the circumstances that led up to the Portuguese invasion of the West Coast of Africa. That was the moment when the lightbulb went off and I realized with precision and clarity, how, when, where and why the Trans Atlantic Slave trade started. It was the moment when I understood the Apostolic Edict known as the Dum Diversas and the evil it unleashed in the world that has yet to be rectified. Before June 2019, no one was talking about the Dum Diversas Papal Bull in international forums or media.
By the end of the year,
October 29, 2019 - I published LEGAL ISSUES EFFECTING BALANTA AS A RESULT OF CONTACT WITH EUROPEAN CHRISTIANS
November 6, 2019 I published DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL ISSUES CONCERNING BALANTA PEOPLE and SUMMARY OF LEGAL ISSUES CONCERNING BALANTA PEOPLE highlighting the Dum Diversas.
July 27, 2020 - I published the Lineage Restoration Movement Declaration (Everyone should read this).
September 24, 2020 I published BALANTA RESPONSE TO THE UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO ON THE 47TH GUINEA BISSAU INDEPENDENCE DAY
November 13, 2020 - BBHAGSIA PRESIDENT ADDRESSES THE WORKING GROUP OF EXPERTS ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT AT THE UNITED NATIONS
November 24, 2020 I published Oligarchy: The Spiritual and International Legal Wars Against the Balanta
It is the legal obligation stemming from Pope Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas declaration of total war against African people that I, as President of BBHAGSIA have been emphasizing in various international forums and working committees directed at members of the African Union and especially to the Republic of Guinea Bissau. The legal argument was laid out in September 2021 in
Lessons From Amilcar Cabral and Siphiwe Baleka: The Dum Diversas War and the Incomplete Independence of Guinea Bissau and January 2022 in
TOWARDS A RIGHT TO RETURN & CITIZENSHIP POLICY FOR DESCENDENTS OF PEOPLE TAKEN FROM TERRITORIES IN AFRICA DURING THE TRANSATLANTIC TRAFFICKING AND ENSLAVEMENT OF AFRICAN PEOPLE: CASE STUDY GUINEA BISSAU which was a source document for
the PRESENTMENT TO THE HOLY SEE IN FURTHERANCE OF REPARATIONS.
Now, let’s fast forward to December 6, 2022, Geneva, Switzerland. At the 1st Session of the new UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD), in my opening presentation, my first sentenced declared,
“The Trans Atlantic Slave Trafficking was launched by an Apostolic Edict of Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452 declaring total war on African people. The Africans that were trafficked across the Atlantic were therefore prisoners of war who were enslaved and completely severed from their ancestral identity.”
I didn’t say “was legitimized.” I didn’t say “enabled.” I didn’t say the Catholic Church was “complicit”. I said “launched”. Google AI states, “Launched is the past tense and past participle of the verb ‘launch.’ It primarily means to set into motion, introduce to the public for the first time, or propel with force.”
I then asked,
“How come none of the European nations that held the Asiento monopoly contract with the Catholic Church have been brought before the International Court of Justice, punished and forced to pay reparations?”
And after citing the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action section VI., I invoked the PFPAD mandate and launched the campaign to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ):
“Towards that end, we call on this Forum to vigorously request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on our status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention as well as our right to conduct plebiscites for self determination including the right to secede from the jurisdictions of colonial successor states in the Western hemisphere and form our own independent governments.”
Following my statement, Kamm Howard made a statement and said,
“Recently, the Global Circle went to the Vatican to deliver a reparations presentment. I am here requesting that the Forum raise the reparations presentment to an internationally recognized legitimate instrument for laying out reparatory justice claims. In a reparations presentment we use DDPA framework -that crimes were committed, injuries continue, and therefore reparations are due. In the Vatican Presentment we indicated the Church’s role in ordering, inaugurating, blessing, and profiting from the ‘Transatlantic Chattelization of Africans and African Descendants.’ Secondly, we charged the Church with the additional crime of creating the lie of white superiority and Black inferiority.”
On January 3, 2023, twenty-eight days following our statements at the 1st Session of PFPAD, its President Epsy Campbell-Barr delivered a Request to Pope Francis for the Catholic Church to seek forgiveness, reparation and reconciliation with peoples of African Descent in America and the Caribbean towards the path of Human Fraternity. In her letter, President Campbell-Barr noted, “John Paul II himself, in 1992, on the island of Gorée, which he called an ‘African sanctuary of Black pain’, asked Heaven for forgiveness for the ‘sin of slavery committed by man against man, and against God’". Here, Pope John Paul II didn’t apologize or ask forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in authorizing the enslavement of African people by the authority of the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict. Instead, he placed the blame and responsibility on “man”.
But President Campbell-Barr then goes on to write,
“Your Holiness, the purpose of this letter is to make a formal request to you so the Catholic Church can ask for forgiveness for its complicity, as well as the direct and indirect encouragement of the atrocities suffered by millions of victims of the transatlantic slave trade of African people and their enslavement for more than three centuries.”
And thus the words ‘forgiveness”, “complicity” and “encouragement” framed the discussion, not “authorized”, “launched” and “legal liability”.
I do not know if President Campbell-Barr received any response from Pope Francis or Pope Leo XIV, but On March 30, 2023, the Vatican’s development and education office said the theory of the “Doctrine of Discovery” – which still informs government policies and laws today – was not part of the Catholic Church’s teachings. In my article, Don't Be Fooled! The Vatican's Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery is Wordplay!, I wrote,
“What the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development did in their March 30 statement was to switch the debate from their declaration of war, which cannot be denied, to the “doctrine of discovery”, which they declare “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church”. They then absolve themselves of responsibility and blame European courts by stating that “The legal concept of “discovery” was debated by colonial powers from the sixteenth century onward and found particular expression in the nineteenth century jurisprudence of courts in several countries.” The Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development then completely ignore the fact that the Catholic Church’s monoply contract Asientos resulted in the trafficking of over 12 million prisoner of war from Africa to the Americas.”
Now comes Pope Leo XIV, who did indeed give what was asked for. Let’s look at his so-called “apology” closely.
After expressing that “the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues” and cautioning that “past events cannot be judged anachronistically” while falsely suggesting that no African jurisprudential systems at that time had "matured' and had “been available” possessing the “moral criteria” preserving the humanity of captured prisoners of war, Pope Leo XIV then admitted, “many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves” and lamented “the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery.” He then praised the Apostolic See of Rome for “responding to requests from Sovereigns, interven[ing] several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation” and that “universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII” which demonstrates “a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards.” Finally, Pope Leo XIV admits that “it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory” and concludes, “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
Not once did Pope Leo XIV address the victims.
Not once did Pope Leo XIV explain the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict or the Asiento monopoly war contracts.
Not once did Pope Leo XIV clarify that the Asiento contracts transform the Dum Diversas decree from a theological statement into an enforceable commercial and military infrastructure and that in international law, if a party (the Vatican) provides the legal mandate for a crime, and another party (the Crowns/Merchants) provides the execution, they are considered jointly and severally liable.
The Asientos prove that the "religious" edict had immediate, tangible, and intended "state" consequences. Which resulted in the following Chain of Custody:
Dum Diversas (The Mandate) → Asiento (The Contract) → Slave Trade (The Execution).
Pope Leo XIV could have announced once and for all that the Asientos prove that the Vatican was the Architect of the Market. Without the "legal title" provided by the Church to "reduce persons to perpetual slavery," the Asiento contracts would have had no legal basis under the international law of that era. Therefore, the Vatican cannot claim the "crimes" were separate from the "edict" when the edict was the very thing that made the crimes legally possible for the Empires.” But Pope Leo XIV didn’t do that. He wasn’t asked to do that. He was asked to ask for forgiveness. It was a mild, diplomatic request. We got a non-apology apology in return.
Rather, Pope Leo XIV expressed sorrow at the “immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many” whom he did not identify: was he talking about the slaves taken from the Slavic countries? Was he talking about the Muslims from the Ottoman empire that were enslaved during the Crusades? Was he talking about the various peoples that were native to the Americas? Who exactly was he talking about? Why did the global Afrikan Reparatory justice movement accept this as an apology to them????
The problem, was the request that President Campbell-Barr sent to Pope Francis. When I first invoked the Catholic Church and the Dum Diversas at the 1st Session of the PFPAD, we were not seeking a plea for forgiveness or pardon from the Pope on behalf of the Catholic Church. We were seeking something entire different as evidenced by the first question on the Request for an Advisory Opinion from the ICJ:
(a) Is the Dum Diversas apostolic decree issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452 a declaration of “total war” - warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs - and therefore a war crime and a crime against humanity? Is there a statute of limitation regarding reparations for this war crime and crime against humanity?
While I do not question my sister President Epsy Campbell-Barr’s genuine intentions, it was her specific choice of words, her framing of the discussion, that informed Pope Francis’ and Pope Leo XIV’s response. Had President Epsy Campbell-Barr consulted with me first and sent a draft of her letter to me for review, I could have corrected the language which would have required an entirely different response. Since that didn’t happen, Pope Leo XIV could ask for forgiveness, a pardon, for merely ‘legitimizing” and “encouraging” as a bystander what others were already doing.
There is a wisdom, saying that goes, “Ask not, receive not”. Similarly, another wisdom saying goes, “you get what you ask for”. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are rapidly learning that how you ask the question, how you make the prompt, determines the answer and the quality of the answer you get.
On the eve of the The African Union Commission on International Law (AUCIL) & The AU Legal Reference Group on Reparations (AULER) meeting at the MFA&RI High-Level Event on the Next Steps of the UN Resolution on Trans-Atlantic Enslavement, Accra, Ghana (June 18–19, 2026), we must make sure that THE RIGHT PEOPLE USING THE RIGHT LANGUAGE are at that all-important strategy session. At that meeting it shouldn’t be about who holds what titles and positions, or which activists have done what for the longest, it should be about WHO HAS THE BEST GRASP OF THE FACTS OF HISTORY AND OPERATES FROM A BLACK AFRICAN SOVEREIGN JUDICIAL MINDSET. Anything less, no matter how good the intention, will compromise our reparations strategy going forward.
For the right words, the right concepts, order the book,
BLACK SOVEREIGN REPARATIONS STRATEGY FOLLOWING UN RESOLUTION A/80/L.48 AND POPE LEO XIV'S NON-APOLOGY APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY
A Message to the The African Union Commission on International Law (AUCIL) & The AU Legal Reference Group on Reparations (AULER) meeting at the MFA&RI High-Level Event on the Next Steps of the UN Resolution on Trans-Atlantic Enslavement, Accra, Ghana (June 18–19, 2026)
Compiled
by
Siphiwe Baleka
SIPHIWE: What demands have Black Catholics made concerning Reparations from the Vatican?
Ancestral Intelligence (AI): The efforts of Black Catholics to secure institutional repair, advocate for civil and human rights, and challenge the Vatican’s historical complicity in systemic racism span centuries. What began as a trans Atlantic black brother hood in the 1680s, later localized lay organizing has evolved into a highly coordinated global movement for formal reparations. Black American Catholics, scholars, and global civil rights coalitions have mobilized to demand structured, material reparations from the Vatican. While local Catholic entities like the Jesuit order have pledged $100 million to the descendants of those they enslaved, activists have maintained that the Holy See must answer for its overarching institutional role. Advocacy groups—including the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing (GCRH) and the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC)—have formally presented specific demands directly to Vatican officials.
Late 19th Century: The Genesis of Organized Lay Resistance
1889 — The First Colored Catholic Congress: Led by journalist and activist Daniel Rudd, nearly 100 Black Catholic men met in Washington, D.C., establishing the National Black Catholic Congress. The body challenged the American Church to provide equitable education and housing, setting a precedent for collective accountability.
1890s — Institutional Stagnation: After hosting five national congresses to document discriminatory practices within the Church, the movement was forced to pause due to financial strains and structural resistance from the white hierarchy.
Early-to-Mid 20th Century: Confronting the Hierarchy
1916 — The Federated Colored Catholics: Founded by professor Thomas Wyatt Turner, this national coalition was formed to protect Black interests within the Church. The group directly lobbied the U.S. bishops to denounce lynchings and discrimination, openly criticizing Rome's inertia on race relations.
1968 — Birth of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCCC): In the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black priests and religious brothers gathered in Detroit. They issued a fierce public statement declaring that "the Catholic Church in the United States is primarily a white racist institution," demanding that the Vatican grant Black Catholics self-determination and local leadership.
Late 20th Century: Reclaiming History and Identity
1985–1987 — Resurrection of the Congress: Black Catholic leaders successfully revived the National Black Catholic Congress after a multi-decade hiatus. This established a permanent modern apparatus to address systemic racism and pastoral neglect.
1990 — Black Catholic History Month: The NBCCC formally established November as Black Catholic History Month to systematically counter the erasure of Afro-diasporic contributions to global Christianity. [1, 2, 3]
21st Century: The Shift to Concrete Reparations - 1990–2018: Internal Pressure and Theological Foundations
1990 — Academic Reclamation: The formalization of November as Black Catholic History Month sparked a wave of internal historical research. Black Catholic scholars began systematically translating and exposing forgotten archdiocesan records detailing the Church's historical slave ownership.
2000 — Jubilee 2000 and Imperial Apologies: During the Great Jubilee, Pope John Paul II issued a sweeping "pardon for past sins" committed by members of the Church, including a general apology for the sins of the slave trade. Black Catholics criticized this as overly broad and lacking material accountabilities.
2016–2018 — The Universitarian Reckoning: Following revelations that Georgetown University (a Jesuit institution) sold 272 enslaved people in 1838 to survive financially, Black Catholic descendants and activists organized locally. This forced the American hierarchy to acknowledge specific, calculated institutional debts.
2019–2021: Siphiwe Baleka and the Legal Pivot
2019 — Baleka Launches the Dum Diversas Campaign: Siphiwe Baleka, President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA), launched a highly targeted, sustained international campaign. Recognizing that local apologies were insufficient, Baleka focused on the Apostolic edict Dum Diversas (1452).
The Legal Argument: Baleka advanced a groundbreaking legal theory: Dum Diversas acted as an official declaration of total war against African peoples, meaning the transatlantic slave trade was legally a war crime. Consequently, he argued that Afro-descendants hold the status of prisoners of war under international law, making the Vatican legally—not just morally—obligated to provide reparations, repatriation, and homeland citizenship.
2021 — Connecting the Diaspora to Africa: Baleka used his legal frameworks to collaborate with the African Union and the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. He launched the Decade of Return Initiative, physically bringing major American reparations leaders to West Africa to establish a unified global front against Rome.
2022–Present: Confronting the Holy See [1, 2]
July 2022 — The Presentment to the Holy See: Building directly upon Baleka’s foundational research regarding Dum Diversas, a coalition named the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing (GCRH) traveled to Rome. Led by activists like Kamm Howard and utilizing Baleka’s source texts, they delivered the historic Presentment to the Holy See in Furtherance of Reparations. The document formally charged the Vatican with initiating the "Chattelization Wars" against Africa.
March 2023 — The First Vatican Yield: Bowing to the relentless legal and moral pressure generated by Baleka, the GCRH, and Indigenous groups, the Vatican formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery." It acknowledged that the 15th-century papal bulls did not reflect Catholic faith and had been weaponized by secular colonizers.
2025 — African Union Mobilization: In early 2025, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) partnered with the African Union to host a summit in Ethiopia. They created an action roadmap to formally integrate faith communities into the AU’s global demands for reparative justice.
May 2026 — The Papal Apology Apex: The compounding momentum from Baleka's 2019 legal campaigns, the 2022 Presentment, and African Union pressure culminated in Pope Leo XIV issuing Magnifica Humanitas. By explicitly apologizing for the Holy Sees' own institutional role in legitimizing slavery, the Vatican finally conceded the core historical argument pushed by the movement for over 30 years.