Does the Catholic Church have a position on slavery reparations? Does the Catholic Church have an official position on slavery reparations?


  For those interested, I asked the same
  question
  on Mi Yodeya, which is the site for Judaism.
I do not think the Church has any official position, or any reason to have one.
In the link provided, Rev. Farrakhan is quoting a papal bull dating from 1452, that is essentially authorizing the Portuguese king, Alfonso V, to conduct a new crusade against the &quot;Saracens&quot; (probably the Ottoman Empire).
In it, there is a phrase in which the pope authorizes the king as follows:

With these words, by the Apostolic authority, we grant you permission to invade, conquer, capture, and subjugate those persons [the Saracens, unbelievers, and enemies of Christ], and reduce them to perpetual servitude, and also the lands, duchies, counties, principalities, and any other dominions, possessions, and goods of the same (my translation).

Or, see the Latin original:

Invadendi, conquerendi, expugnandi, et subiugandi, illorumque personas in perpetuam servitutem redigendi, regna quoque, Ducatus, Comitatus, Principatus, aliaque Dominia, possessiones, et bona huiusmodi, tibi et successoribus tuis Regibus Portugalliae, perpetuo applicandi, et appropriandi, ac in tuos, et eorundem successorum usus, et utilitates convertendi plenam, et liberam, auctoritate Apostolica, tenore praesentium concedimus facultatem.

Noteworthy is the phrase perpetuam servitutem. It is possible that the pope is authorizing a kind of serfdom, which was still all too common in Europe at the time. The term servitudo is ambiguous. In addition to &quot;slavery,&quot; it could be a generic term for &quot;subjugation&quot; or &quot;service.&quot;
Pope Nicholas actually uses the term in that way in the opening of the bull:

Dum diversas, nobis licet immeritis superna providentia commissi Apostolicae servitutis officii, curas, quibus quotidie Nos urgentibus angimur, sedula quoque hortatione pulsamur, in mente revolvimus.
As we turn over in our minds the various cares of the duty of Apostolic service, entrusted to us by celestial providence (much as we do not deserve it), by which we are urgently anguished, we are also moved by an insistent encouragement.

Regardless of Rev. Farrakhan's intentions, he does not seem to have been aware that this bull was written nearly a century before the Atlantic slave trade began. It was completely unrelated to the tragic deportation of Africans to the Americas.
That the pope should authorize a crusade of this kind (let alone authorize serfdom for the conquered peoples) is, naturally, an excessive mingling of temporal and spiritual power.
This bull cannot, however, be construed as a teaching or magisterial document. It has no weight whatsoever regarding the Church's teaching about serfdom and slavery, which did not develop until later, in the light of the Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the Americas.