Pope’s Angola pilgrimage confronts Catholic Church’s complicity in transatlantic slavery and ongoing structural racism in global Christianity

African spiritual traditions, such as those of the Mbunda and Ovimbundu peoples in Angola, view the shrine’s history as a site of ancestral trauma rather than mere historical fact. These traditions emphasize collective memory and ritual healing, which Western narratives of reconciliation often overlook. The Catholic Church’s erasure of indigenous spiritual practices during colonization created lasting intergenerational wounds that structural apologies fail to address. Indigenous theologians, such as those in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, argue for decolonial faith practices that center African epistemologies.

The transatlantic slave trade was not an isolated event but a systemic project enabled by the Catholic Church’s theological justifications, including the 1452 papal bull *Dum Diversas*, which authorized the enslavement of non-Christians. The shrine in Angola, built in 1604, was a key site for the Portuguese crown and Church to legitimize slavery through conversion narratives. This history parallels other colonial-era religious sites, such as the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, which was built atop indigenous sacred spaces. The Church’s role in slavery extended beyond moral failure to economic exploitation, with religious orders owning enslaved people and profiting from their labor.

In Latin America, the Catholic Church’s complicity in slavery is often framed through the lens of liberation theology, which emerged in the 1960s as a critique of institutional complicity. African Christian movements, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, have historically resisted colonial imposition by centering African identity within Christianity. The Pope’s visit could draw parallels with Pope Francis’s 2015 apology to indigenous peoples in Bolivia, though the latter was met with skepticism over its lack of reparative action. Cross-cultural comparisons reveal that apologies without material reparations or structural change are performative rather than transformative.

Historical records from the Vatican Apostolic Archive and Portuguese colonial archives confirm the Church’s direct involvement in the slave trade, including the sale of enslaved Africans by Jesuit and Dominican orders. Economic historians, such as Nathan Nunn, have demonstrated that regions with higher historical slave exports correlate with lower contemporary economic development, suggesting long-term structural harm. Demographic studies show that the transatlantic slave trade depopulated entire regions of Africa, disrupting social and economic systems that persisted for centuries. The Church’s role in this process is documented in papal decrees, missionary correspondence, and financial records from religious institutions.

Artists like Angolan painter António Ole and Congolese sculptor Bodys Isek Kingelez have used their work to confront the Catholic Church’s colonial legacy, blending sacred and profane imagery to evoke the trauma of slavery. In Angola, traditional *semba* music and *kizomba* dance often carry themes of resistance and memory, which are absent in Catholic narratives of reconciliation. The shrine’s architecture itself—a blend of Portuguese baroque and African motifs—symbolizes the forced syncretism that erased indigenous spiritual practices. Spiritual leaders in the diaspora, such as Mama Lola in Haitian Vodou, argue that true healing requires acknowledging the spiritual violence of colonization.

A systemic solution would involve the Catholic Church establishing a truth and reconciliation commission with African theologians, historians, and descendants of enslaved people to document and address historical harms. The Church could redirect a portion of its global wealth—estimated at $170 billion—to reparations, including funding African-led theological education and cultural preservation. Future papal visits to sites of colonial violence should include material commitments, such as returning looted artifacts or investing in local economies, rather than symbolic gestures. Scenario modeling suggests that without structural change, such visits will remain performative, perpetuating cycles of symbolic justice without accountability.

Descendants of enslaved Africans in the diaspora, such as those in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States, have long demanded reparations from the Catholic Church, yet their voices are rarely centered in Western media narratives. African clergy of African descent, such as Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea, have criticized the Church’s slow pace in addressing racism within its ranks. Women theologians in Africa, like Mercy Amba Oduyoye, argue that the Church’s patriarchal structures compound racial injustices, as Black women are often the most marginalized within both the Church and society. The omission of these voices reinforces the power of Western-centric narratives that prioritize institutional redemption over justice.