EWTN News reports that the usurper Robert Prevost, styling himself “Pope Leo XIV,” issued an encyclical titled *Magnifica Humanitas* in which he apologized for the Catholic Church’s historical role in slavery, specifically critiquing papal bulls from the 15th century issued by Popes Eugenius IV and Nicholas V. The article explains that while the Church never doctrinally taught slavery was morally good, certain popes “intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation” at the request of political leaders. The usurper wrote: “Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel.” The article further notes that a “formal, absolute, and universal condemnation of slavery” was not issued until Pope Leo XIII’s 1888 encyclical, and that Leo XIV added that “we [cannot] deny or diminish” the Church’s delay in its denouncement. Catholic Answers apologist Tom Nash defended the Church by arguing that the bulls in question were not infallible doctrinal pronouncements but rather “prudential judgments” applicable only to specific historical circumstances, and that the Church has never definitively taught that chattel slavery was morally just. The article also references earlier papal condemnations of slavery, including Pope Paul III’s 1537 bull *Sublimis Deus*, Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 brief *In Supremo Apostolatus*, and St. John Paul II’s apologies for Christian participation in slavery. The article concludes by noting that Christian opposition to slavery is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the inherent dignity of every human person. This article, far from being a simple historical reflection, is a masterclass in modernist revisionism, historical manipulation, and the systematic undermining of the Church’s doctrinal authority—all hallmarks of the conciliar sect’s ongoing apostasy.
The Usurper’s Presumption: An Antipope Speaks for the Church
The very foundation of this article rests upon a monstrous usurpation. The individual referred to as “Pope Leo XIV” is, in reality, Robert Prevost, an antipope occupying the Vatican since his installation by the conciliar sect. He possesses no authority whatsoever to speak for the Catholic Church, to issue encyclicals, or to ask pardon in her name. The true Church of Christ, the *Ecclesia militans*, endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments—not in the paramasonic structures occupying Rome since the death of the last valid Pope, Pius XII. As the sedevacantist position, grounded in the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, holds: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30). The conciliar sect, having embraced the heresies of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu, and having promulgated the apostasy of Vatican II—including the heretical declaration Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom—has severed itself from the true Church. Every utterance from the antipope and his accomplices is null, void, and spiritually poisonous.
Historical Revisionism as a Weapon Against the Church
The usurper’s apology for slavery, and the article’s uncritical repetition of it, constitutes a deliberate act of historical revisionism designed to undermine confidence in the Church’s Magisterium. The article states that Leo XIV “critiqued papal bulls issued in the late Middle Ages on the subject” of slavery, specifically citing Pope Eugenius IV’s Sicut Dudum and Etsi Suscepti, and Pope Nicholas V’s Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex. The usurper’s footnote reads: “Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel. The need for evangelization was frequently compromised or at least misunderstood with regard to the needs of worldly powers, thus relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience.”
This is a breathtaking act of calumny against the Holy See. The papal bulls in question were issued in specific historical contexts—namely, the Portuguese exploration of West Africa and the Canary Islands—where the primary concern was the protection of newly converted Christians from enslavement and the regulation of conflicts with non-Christian peoples. As Tom Nash himself acknowledges in the article, Eugenius IV’s Sicut Dudum “excommunicated anyone who enslaved Christians or those seeking baptism.” The bull did not sanction slavery as such but rather protected the faithful from its abuses. To characterize these documents as “relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience” is to impose a modernist, anachronistic framework upon the past—precisely the kind of historical relativism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the notion that “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason” (Proposition 5).
The Modernist Heresy of Doctrinal Development
The usurper’s statement that “In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues” is a direct echo of the Modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X. In Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), the Holy Office condemned the proposition that “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Proposition 22), as well as the proposition that “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58). The usurper’s language of “development of doctrine” and “gradual awareness” is not Catholic theology—it is the Modernist corruption of it, the very “evolution of dogmas” that St. Pius X identified as “the synthesis of all errors” in Pascendi Dominici gregis.
The Catholic position is clear: the Church’s doctrine is immutable. What the Church taught in the first century, she teaches in the twenty-first. The Church has always affirmed the inherent dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), and has always condemned the unjust enslavement of the innocent. The Church’s social teaching, articulated with supreme authority by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) and Immortale Dei (1885), and by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), has consistently upheld the natural law principles of justice, charity, and the common good. The notion that the Church “gradually came to a deeper awareness” of the evil of slavery is not a development of doctrine—it is a denial of the Church’s infallible teaching authority.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Omits
The most damning aspect of this article is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention whatsoever of the true crisis facing the Church: the apostasy of the conciliar sect, the systematic destruction of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass through the Novus Ordo Missae, the promulgation of heresies on religious freedom, ecumenism, and the nature of the Church. The article treats the usurper’s encyclical as a legitimate exercise of papal authority, when in reality it is the pronouncement of a manifest heretic who has lost his office ipso facto by virtue of his public adherence to the errors of Vatican II.
There is no warning that receiving “Communion” in the post-conciliar structures, where the Mass has been reduced to a table of assembly and the rubrics violate the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice, constitutes sacrilege. There is no mention that the conciliar sect’s “ecumenism” is a betrayal of the Church’s exclusive claim to be the one true Church of Christ, as taught by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928). There is no acknowledgment that the usurper’s apology for slavery is part of a broader pattern of modernist subversion—the same pattern that has produced the cult of man, the democratization of the Church, and the systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine on faith, morals, and worship.
The Apologist’s Complicity: Tom Nash and Catholic Answers
Tom Nash, the staff apologist for Catholic Answers quoted in the article, attempts to defend the Church by arguing that the papal bulls in question were “prudential judgments” rather than infallible doctrinal pronouncements. While this distinction is technically correct—the bulls were disciplinary and prudential in nature, not ex cathedra definitions—Nash’s defense is fatally compromised by his implicit recognition of the usurper’s authority. By engaging with the antipope’s encyclical as though it were a legitimate papal document, Nash lends credibility to the conciliar sect and its apostate agenda. His defense of the Church’s historical record on slavery, while factually accurate in part, is rendered meaningless by his refusal to confront the fundamental issue: the individual issuing the apology has no authority to speak for the Church, and the structures he represents are not the Catholic Church.
The True Church’s Unchanging Teaching on Human Dignity
The Catholic Church has always taught the inherent dignity of every human person. The Apostle Paul wrote: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The Church’s social teaching, rooted in the natural law and the divine law, has consistently condemned the unjust enslavement of the innocent and has worked throughout history to mitigate the evils of slavery. Pope Paul III’s 1537 bull Sublimis Deus expressly condemned the enslavement of Indigenous Americans, declaring that they “should not be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property” and that they “should be invited to faith in Christ by the preaching of the word of God and the example of a good life.” Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 brief In Supremo Apostolatus condemned the slave trade in its entirety. These are not “prudential judgments” that can be relativized or apologized for—they are expressions of the Church’s immutable moral teaching.
The Duty of the Faithful: Rejection of the Conciliar Apostasy
The faithful are bound in conscience to reject the usurper’s encyclical, the conciliar sect’s apostasy, and all attempts to revise or relativize the Church’s unchanging doctrine. As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”—this proposition is condemned (Proposition 80). The usurper’s apology for slavery is not an act of humility or justice—it is an act of submission to the spirit of the world, a capitulation to the forces of Modernism that have been destroying the Church since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The faithful must return to the immutable Tradition of the Church—the Tradition that produced the Council of Trent, the Syllabus of Errors, the encyclicals of Leo XIII, and the anti-Modernist oath of St. Pius X. They must reject the conciliar sect and its antipope, and they must seek out the true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments. As Our Lord Himself declared: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32). The truth is not found in the usurper’s encyclicals or the apologists’ defenses—it is found in the unchanging doctrine of the Catholic Church, which endures forever.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV builds on teachings of prior pontiffs with apology for slavery, Church’s role (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.06.2026