s
also on account of the enslavement of Negroes and Indians in the
Americas, other Popes proclaimed the Christian law in regard to the
cruelties of the slave trade. Again Urban VIII, in 1639, and Benedict
XIV, in 1741, were defenders of the liberty of the Indians and blacks
even though they were not as yet instructed in the Christian
faith.[488] In 1815, Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the
suppression of the slave trade. In the Bull of Canonization of St.
Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius
IX speaks of the "supreme villainy" of the slave-traders. Gregory XVI,
in 1839, published a memorable encyclical in which the following
strong language occurs:

"By virtue of our Apostolic office, we warn and admonish in the
Lord all Christians of whatever conditions they may be, and
enjoin upon them that for the future, no one shall venture
unjustly to oppress the Indians, Negroes or other men whoever
they may be, to strip them of their property, or reduce them into
servitude, or give aid or support to those who commit such
excesses or carry on that infamous traffic by which the blacks,
as if they were not men, but mere impure animals reduced like
them into servitude, contrary to the laws of justice and
humanity, are bought, sold and devoted to endure the hardest
labor. Wherefore, by virtue of our Apostolic authority, we
condemn all these things as absolutely unworthy of the Christian
name."[489]

Probably the most memorable statement of the history and Catholic
position on slavery is the beautiful letter which Pope Leo XIII, in
1888, addressed to the Brazilian Bishops, exhorting them to banish
from their country the remnants of slavery--a letter to which the
Bishops responded with their most energetic efforts. Some generous
slave-owners freed their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the
Church. Catholic Brazil emancipated its slaves without war or
bloodshed. The following are some extracts from the Pope's letter:

"The condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the
human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many
centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one wholly
opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by
nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man
should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and c