WASHINGTON — Catholic Religious Organizations Studying Slavery held its second-ever conference from Nov. 13-14 at Georgetown University, bringing together scholars, ministers, educators, and descendants for recollection and remembrance.
Among those presenting for the CROSS gathering were representatives from Catholic institutions and religious communities that trafficked African Americans in their early history, as well as two bishops descended from enslaved people.
“As members of CROSS, your efforts to respond to racism, offering hope and healing for the pain it has caused, are indeed advancing the kingdom of God present here among us,” said Archbishop Shelton Fabre of Louisville in his homily during Mass on the first day of the conference.
“Wisdom guides CROSS as you develop and promote best practices for the Church to pursue healing and reconciliation in response to the sin of racism.”
The theme of slavery as identifiable sin was a theme throughout this year’s conference, which honed in on local and national efforts to not only uncover but also publicize and make accessible the records related to the Catholic Church’s participation in slavery. Especially in focus, as at the inaugural conference in 2023, was the participation of the Church’s highest leadership, including a slew of early American bishops, priests, and consecrated religious—men and women. Also highlighted was the various modes of Black resistance, be it attempts to escape, sue for freedom, or—in recent times—tell the difficult histories and demand change.
The host of this year’s event, Georgetown University, is in many ways the nexus of U.S. Catholic slaveholding, having been the home of hundreds of enslaved people who helped build the university. The conference also coincided with the anniversary of the embarkation of “GU272”: the African Americans—whom Dr. Adam J. Rothman pointedly described as “children, women, and men”—sold by the Jesuits to save Georgetown’s finances in 1838.
The remembrance of that event took center stage on Thursday evening with a keynote from Rachel Swarns, a New York Times writer who released her book “The 272” in 2023. Her address traced her journey of discovery as a Black Catholic writer who stumbled upon the revelation of Jesuit slaveholding before writing a viral NYT article on it in 2016.
“Priests who relied on slave labor and slave sales built the nation's first Catholic archdiocese. They established the nation's first Catholic institution of higher learning, Georgetown. They help to build the nation's first Catholic cathedral. Priests who operated a plantation and sold people established the nation's first Catholic seminary,” Swarns said in the university’s Healy Hall.
“The very underpinnings of the Catholic church were built by priests who relied on slavery.”
Several other religious communities and dioceses were represented at the conference, including the Vincentians (several of whose early American bishops were traffickers), the Redemptorists, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and the (Arch)dioceses of St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, and Baton Rouge. Much of their work, as recounted this week at Georgetown, involves reckoning with the Catholic Church’s ties to slavery as a contradiction of the faith rather than a justifiable product of the times.
"There is no such thing as a benevolent form of slavery,” said Eric Fair, archives director for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. “An act based in the evil of racism is a sinful act.”
The CROSS conference also served as a time of reunion and healing for those affected by the Catholic Church’s legacy of enslavement, especially in relation to the Jesuits. The keynote event on Thursday was rounded out by a memorial ceremony for the ancestors who were sold to Louisiana in 1838, with descendants from across the country taking part.
A representative of GU272 descendants, Rochell Sanders Prater, also announced that a new organization will succeed the GU272 Descendants Association: Descendants United, which encompasses all descendants of U.S. Jesuit enslavement—including in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Louisiana, Kansas, Alabama, Illinois, and Kentucky.
“Because of the emerging history beyond the 1838 sale, we recognized there was a need for us to unify and represent all the descendant groups,” said Sanders Prater.
The event also honored one of the first descendants to uncover the history of Jesuit slaveholding in African-American ancestry, Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, who wrote publicly on the topic in 2008. In addition to being feted by her fellow descendants after Swarn's keynote, Bayonne-Johnson received an official proclamation from Georgetown University by way of the school’s senior vice president and chief of staff, Dr. Joseph A. Ferrara.
“Her groundbreaking research with the Jesuit Plantation Project illuminated the lives of the enslaved and revealed the manifest of the ‘Katherine Jackson,’” Ferrara noted, referring to the ship that took the GU272 from Alexandria, Virginia, to southern Louisiana this week 187 years ago.
“Patricia has transformed personal discovery into collective healing and empowerment.”
In all, as with the inaugural conference two years ago, the CROSS conference at Georgetown sought not only historical discovery, but a reordering of the broader understanding of American Catholicism. The proposed shift is from one focused seemingly bright (White) stars who were in fact violators of human dignity, to the Black suffering servants and cofounders of U.S. Catholic life who toiled to build up a Church that tore them down in return.
The list of known American Catholic enslavers is long, and—should the historical work continue, as CROSS urges—will grow longer. But the list of the enslaved will also grow, named and unnamed, unlocking hidden histories and the truths of an American past that is more than that of the victors and people-owners.
“We recognize that these bishops and clergy sinned through their acts. In St. Louis, the history of the Catholic Church is uniquely bound to the history of the region. We celebrate the names and stories of the Catholic faithful. DuBourg, Rosati, Duchesne, Chouteau,” said Fair.
“These are all names that are familiar to us. And now, it is time to add new names to that list.”
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
