Who knows, maybe some reparations may be happening soon, at least from the Catholic Church
Quote:Catholic Jesuits are confessing their participation in slavery. Some wonder if revealing 'sinful past' is more PR than atonement
Joseph Stewart, a 79-year-old African American who grew up in the small town of Maringouin, Louisiana, has been a devoted Catholic his entire life.
"I was baptized a Catholic, raised a Catholic, almost went to seminary as a Catholic and I'm still a Catholic," Stewart said.
But on April 16, 2016, Stewart discovered a painful truth about the Catholic church's participation in slavery and his own connection to that recently uncovered history. It's a history that some residents of Phoenix also learned more deeply about during a recent visit by a Jesuit leader.
On that day in 2016 a friend called to alert Stewart to a front page story in the New York Times with the headline: "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?"
Through the article, Stewart learned for the first time that Catholic Jesuits had once owned slaves to work tobacco plantations in Maryland. In 1838, the Jesuits had sold 272 enslaved people to sugar plantations in Louisiana near Maringouin to save what is now Georgetown University from financial ruin.
In the weeks that followed Stewart found out he had an even deeper connection to the sale of enslaved people by the Jesuits. He himself was one of the descendants.
The partnership is intended to expand public awareness about the Catholic Church's participation in slavery, and raise a goal of $1 billion to benefit descendants as part of process of truth, healing and reconciliation.
The Jesuits made a pledge in March 2021 to raise $100 million toward the $1 billion goal within three to five years.
The fundraising has gotten off to a slow start. The initial $15 million deposited in the trust by the Jesuits has barely grown. Descendants are starting to wonder whether the Jesuits' public apology for the Catholic order's enslavement of their ancestors and promises to rectify the harms they committed were little more than hollow words.
In a scathing letter to Catholic officials in Rome, Stewart and other descendants accuse the Jesuits of dragging their feet at a time when a decades-old national and global movement for reparations has gained momentum.
"It is becoming obvious to all who look beyond words that Jesuits are not delivering in deed," Stewart wrote in the Aug. 3 letter to the Rev. Arturo Sosa, the head of the Jesuits in Rome. "No matter how well their intent, the Jesuits have not set up this partnership for success."
To speed up the fundraising process, the descendants want the Jesuits to transfer proceeds from past and future sales of plantation lands, including $57 million the Jesuits made from the sale of some plantation lands in 2009 by Christmas of this year.
They want the Jesuits to deposit $100 million by next July; $500 million by July 2025; and $1 billion by July 2029.
See the rest in link:
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/loca...879686001/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
