THE Church is often touted as a champion of the poor and features in many efforts to improve the lot of the under-privileged and marginalised.
In this article we shall examine the role of the Catholic Church in the colonisation of Africa.
As slavery was the long painful prelude to colonisation, we shall first explore what role the Catholic Church, the mother of all Western Christian churches, played in the enslavement of black Africans.
Later we shall focus on the role of the Catholic Church in the colonisation of Zimbabwe and the sub-region.
It will be useful to first scan the historical spectrum to locate the Catholic Church in the context of slavery and then its succeeding phase, colonialism.
Western Christian missionaries are largely credited with providing education and health services to the African masses.
While this sounds laudable, the ugly face of the church in the rape and looting of Africa’s resources has tended to be masked.
We will let history speak to us on this matter.
Africa has suffered a double tragedy in that four centuries of slavery were immediately followed by colonialism which, like a chameleon has changed its colours to now pass as neo-colonialism.
The long-suffering people of black Africa even politely refer to their former slave masters and colonisers as development partners, but the looting continues.
It is well-documented, however, that in fact Europe, the so-called development partner of Africa, played the greatest role in stifling the continent’s development as they turned the continent into a looting zone, shipping to Europe and America both natural resources and cultural artefacts.
The Catholic Church benefitted the most from the economic exploitation of Africa and the New World (the Americas, Carribeans) as it was at the centre of religious and cultural pulse of Europe.
Walter Rodney, the Guyanese writer, in his 1960s book, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, explains how white people, led by Bible-wielding missionaries came to plunder the natural resources of Africa.
The missionaries’ role was to soften the target – African populations – by pounding them with a false gospel of poverty with a promise of a good life in heaven.
My search of the internet has provided some startling historical facts regarding the role of the Catholic Church in the enslavement of Africa and the so-called ‘New World’.
After googling ‘catholic, slavery, Africa’, I obtained a mass of information that I now share with you readers.
Before the rise of Protestantism, all Europe was virtually Catholic.
The principal Catholic slave countries included Spain, Portugal, France, England, Netherlands and Germany, the main colonisers of Africa.
The Catholic Church was the most powerful influence over the rulers of these countries.
It had it in its power to prevent the Slave Trade that ravaged Africa for over four centuries, but didn’t until the 17th century.
But let us review the attitudes and policies of the Catholic Church and its leaders towards slavery so as to understand how it became the principal agent of the slavery of Africans.
Pope Pius IX is quoted as saying: “Slavery is not contrary to the natural and divine law.
“It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given.”
It must be remembered that the Pope’s word in the Catholic Church is the equivalent of God’s word.
The Pope says slavery is good and so that became the accepted norm.
The Catholic Bishop Las Casas is reported to have initiated the first ever shipment of black African slaves across the Atlantic ocean with Charles V authorising it in 1517.
Catholic Jesuit priests owned black slaves although they worked to alleviate the suffering of Native Americans (Red Indians) in America.
What a contradiction!
Clearly the black Africans were considered less human than the natives of America.
It must be noted that all books critical of slavery were banned by the Catholic Holy Office and placed on the ‘Forbidden Books’ list between 1573 and 1826.
Capuchin Catholic missionaries were excommunicated for advocating the emancipation of black slaves in America.
The above instances clearly demonstrate the Catholic Church’s total commitment to the slave trade and zero tolerance to all calls for the freeing of black slaves.
A chronicle of Catholic Church policies on slavery over much of the Christian Era is most revealing.
In 362 AD, the Local Council at Gangria in Asia Minor excommunicated those who encouraged slaves to despise their masters or to withdraw their services. This remained the Church Law up to the 20th Century.
Between 354 AD and 430 AD, St Augustine taught that the institution of slavery derives from God and is beneficial to both master and slave!
In 650 AD, Pope Martin I condemned people who teach slaves about freedom or encourage escape.
In 1179 AD the Third Lateran Council imposed slavery on those helping the Saracens (Muslims) while in 1226 AD, the Legitimacy of Slavery was incorporated in the Corpus luris Canonisi and promulgated by Pope Gregory IX.
This remained the official Law of the Catholic Church until 1913.
The Catholic Church thus had four categories of slaves recognised by its legal statutes.
These included those captured in war, those enslaved for committing crime, those selling themselves into slavery or sold by parents into slavery and fourth, children whose mothers were slaves.
From 1224 to 1274, St Thomas Aquinas defended slavery as instituted by God in punishment for sin and justified as being part of the ‘right of nations’ and natural law.
He expounded that children of slave mothers are rightly slaves even though they have not committed a sin.
In 1452 AD, Pope Nicholas V issued a Papal Bull Dum Diversas on June 18 1452 which authorised King Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any Saracens (Muslims), and pagans and unbelievers to perpetual slavery.
The Pope wrote Romanus Pontifex on June 5 1455 extending Catholic Nations of Europe dominion over discovered lands, sanctioning seizure of non-Christian (Catholic) lands and encouraging enslavement of native non-Christian people in Africa and the New World.
In 1493 AD Pope Alexander IV authorised the King of Spain to enslave non-Christians of the Americas who were at war with Christian powers. Subsequently the same Pope in the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the New World between Spain and Portugal and authorised them to import slaves to work on the plantations.
From 1500 to 1850 AD, 12 million Africans were shipped to America as slaves in the Catholic colonies of Spain and Portugal.
In 1866 Pope Pius IX declared: “Slavery itself is not at all contrary to natural and divine law as slaves can be sold, bought, exchanged or given away.”
So we can see that the Catholic Church, speaking from its highest offices, not only endorsed, but actively participated in and benefitted immensely from the Slave Trade which decimated African populations and prevented them from developing for a period in excess of 400 years.
In the next episode, we shall look at the activities of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe and other parts of the sub-region up to the present time.