page_title: Catholic Church and slavery
section_title: The movement towards abolition of slavery
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church and slavery / The movement towards abolition of slavery
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Toussaint Louverture&#32;– Leader of the Haitian Revolution
context_page_description: The issue of slavery was historically treated with concern by the Catholic Church. Throughout most of human history, slavery has been practiced and accepted by many cultures and religions around the world, including ancient Rome. Certain passages in the Old Testament sanctioned forms of temporal slavery as means to pay a debt. Slaves were restored their freedom and previous property every 50 years on a year of Jubilee, if their debt was not already paid. The Catholic Church still celebrates the Jubilee year.
  The Bible also supports buying other kinds of slaves and owning them as property:
  "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life."
  The Bible does create a standard for the treatment of slaves:
context_section_description: The 18th century saw both the slave colonies in the New World become very important economically to Britain and France as well as Spain and Portugal, and also the growth of opposition to slavery in principle, leading to political movements for the abolition of slavery. This was related to the Enlightenment but generally based on Christian ethical principles; in the English-speaking countries many leading figures were Non-conformist Protestants.
  French Catholic intellectuals who were notable writers against slavery included Montesquieu and later the radical priests Guillaume-Thomas Raynal and the Abbé Gregoire.
  Legal cases such as the French case of Jean Boucaux v. Verdelin of 1738 and the  English Somersett's Case (1772) essentially ended the status of slave in the home countries, but without affecting the colonies. The French Revolution, in which Raynal and Gregoire were notable figures, did not initially have emancipation as a goal, but after failing to stamp out the Haitian Revolution, led by the devout Catholic ex-slave Toussaint L'Overture, and alarmed by British attempts to link up with the slave rebels, in 1794 the French entirely abolished slavery in all French territories.
  The British followed in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act 1807, which outlawed all  international slave-trafficking, but not slave owning, which was legal in the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1807 the British began to use their naval power and diplomatic pressure to lead the international movement eradicating  international slave-trafficking completely, which was eventually almost entirely successful.
  In 1810, a Mexican Catholic Priest, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who is also the Father of the Mexican nation, declared slavery abolished, but this was not official until the War of Independence finished.
  Pius VII joined the declaration of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, urging the suppression of the slave trade. By now the major consistent opposition to this came from Spain and Portugal, to whose empires a continued supply of new slaves remained economically very important. In the United States the slave population was largely able to maintain its numbers, and even many slave-owners accepted the evils of the African slave-trade and the need to abolish it.
  Pius wrote letters to the restored King of France in 1814 and the King of Portugal in 1823 urging the same thing. By now the Papacy was under political pressure from the British government, as British support was needed at the Congress of Vienna for the restoration of the Papal States.
  On reviewing the history of the Church with respect slavery Maxwell (1975) concludes that "In Catholic countries the abolition of slavery has been due mainly to humanist influences". The political philosopher Luigi Sturzo argued that the change in attitude to slavery among many Christian thinkers followed its legal abolition rather than preceding it.
caption: Toussaint L'Ouverture
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