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a morally acceptable practice.

The doctrine of ex cathedra (papal infallibility) is invoked when the pope speaks definitively on matters of faith and morals for the entire Church. No papal statement endorsing or legitimizing slavery has ever met the strict theological criteria required for this classification.

Other popes explicitly opposed the enslavement of specific groups early on. Pope Eugene IV issued the papal bull Sicut Dudum in 1435 condemning the enslavement of newly converted Indigenous people in the Canary Islands, and Pope Paul III issued Sublimis Deus in 1537 forbidding the enslavement of all indigenous peoples in the Americas.

In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI officially condemned the trans-Atlantic slave trade in his bull In Supremo Apostolatus. Later, the Church formally declared chattel slavery — based on race or treating human beings as property — to be a grave violation of human dignity.