Descendants and Jesuits find a path toward healing through 'What We Inherit'
The traveling “What We Inherit” exhibit at the University of St. Thomas recounts the 1838 sale by the Jesuits of 314 enslaved Black people. Created by the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation with descendants and Jesuits, the exhibit uses archival materials, photographs, interactive media and testimonies to bring the history to life. Descendants and Jesuits say confronting the Church’s role in slavery can support racial healing and reconciliation, while challenging visitors to help repair its lasting effects. The exhibit’s creators hope remembrance will lead to hopeful conversations and action rather than burying or avoiding the past.
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The traveling exhibit “What We Inherit: Truth, Repair, and a Promise to the Future” brings the stories of 314 Black people enslaved and sold by the Society of Jesus in 1838 to the University of St. Thomas, where it opened Oct. 5. Developed by descendants and Jesuits, it pairs historical records with personal testimony to encourage reflection on the history and on what reconciliation requires.
Launched by the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation (DTRF), the exhibit uses 28 panels, archival records, historical photographs, interactive media and testimony from descendants and Jesuits. Its creators aimed to make the history personal, including by featuring ancestors with living descendants and images representing multiple generations.
The project was developed from January through October with DTRF, Jesuits, descendants, Rise Strategy, Loyola Productions and DPI Baton Rouge. The exhibit opened at St. Thomas, and its organizers expect it to travel to other locations.
DTRF president and CEO Monique Maddox said she and others learned in 2016 that they descended from people enslaved by the Jesuits. She said descendants wanted to help define reconciliation, and described the exhibit as a way to discuss slavery’s trauma while also emphasizing the possibility of healing.
Jesuit Father Timothy Kesicki, who issued a public apology on behalf of the Jesuits in 2017, said the exhibit brought back conversations with descendants about trauma, pain and betrayal. He urged visitors to see the history as relevant to them, invoking the responsibility of people who inherit a damaged house to help repair it.
Descendant Nolan Stewart, whose ancestor Isaac Hawkins is featured, said seeing his face alongside family images made the history feel close and personal. Though revisiting it was difficult, he said the collaboration to acknowledge and address past wrongs gave him hope.
At St. Thomas, history professor Yohuru Williams said the exhibit offers an opportunity to discuss historical injustice in light of recent events in the Twin Cities, including the murder of George Floyd and Metro Surge. He said a Catholic university can invite the Church to consider not only the history but also how to repair relationships and build fellowship.
Williams said the exhibit is intended to invite conversation without immediately polarizing visitors. He encouraged them to reflect on three questions rooted in the Jesuit tradition: “Who am I? Whose am I? And who am I called to be?”
Maddox said DTRF intends to keep telling descendants’ stories so they are not buried again. The foundation’s continuing work includes racial-healing programs, educational scholarships and opportunities for descendants, and financial support for elderly and infirm descendants.
Catholic responsibility for slavery and the ethics of reparation
Catholic reflection on slavery must hold together two truths: the Church’s Gospel contains principles that challenge the denial of human dignity, and Christians—including people acting within Catholic societies and institutions—have nevertheless participated in or accommodated slavery. The Church’s responsibility is therefore neither erased by citing its efforts to protect enslaved people nor fairly described by assigning undifferentiated guilt to every Catholic across generations. Catholic principles of reparation call instead for accurate historical judgment, truthful acknowledgment, repentance, and appropriate acts of repair—especially where past wrongs continue to cause identifiable harm.
Slavery is not one uniform historical arrangement. Its forms and circumstances differed, and that matters when historians assess particular institutions and the responsibility of particular people. But the African slave trade and the enslavement it sustained involved the forcible removal and sale of people, the separation of families, and grave violations of human rights. At Gorée Island, Pope John Paul II recalled that baptized people participated in this “shameful trade” and called for the sin against human beings and against God to be confessed truthfully and humbly. He also condemned slavery’s continuing effects and newer forms of enslavement.
The record is not one of uninterrupted Catholic opposition. An older Catholic account describes Christian moralists as accepting that slavery was not necessarily contrary to natural law in every conceivable form, while also insisting that enslaved people retained inviolable rights and that masters could not treat them as property in the sense of having unlimited power over them. The account itself distinguishes this theoretical argument from slavery as historically practiced, with its abuses and denial of rights. It is evidence of a real strand in older Catholic moral reasoning—not a sufficient account of the whole history, and not a warrant for excusing the slave trade or brutal enslavement.
Other Catholic accounts stress the Church’s efforts to mitigate slavery, protect enslaved people, and promote manumission. Leo XIII, for example, recalled protections and acts of liberation associated with the Church. Those efforts belong in the history, but they do not cancel the participation of baptized people in the trade or the fact that Christian teaching was not always applied in a way that decisively confronted slavery. A scholarly assessment supplied here notes both the Church’s protective actions and the long-standing acceptance of slavery as part of society, including Christian and papal slaveholding. These claims require historical examination rather than being resolved by selecting either a purely condemnatory or purely self-defensive account.
The International Theological Commission (ITC) warns against two opposite errors: apologetics that tries to justify everything, and unwarranted blame based on historically untenable attributions. A sound moral judgment first asks what happened, what was said or done, and what those involved could reasonably have understood in their historical circumstances. Only after rigorous historical work should theological judgment identify what contradicted the Gospel and what amends are appropriate.
This means responsibility should be identified with care. It may attach to individuals who enslaved, trafficked, profited from, or defended the practice; to institutions that participated in it or benefited from it; and, where the evidence warrants it, to institutional decisions or policies. It should not be assigned indiscriminately to everyone who shared a religious identity or lived in a later generation. Nor should the Church’s history of protection and advocacy be used to obscure culpable participation by Catholics. John Paul II’s language at Gorée is important precisely because it acknowledged that people who were baptized took part in the trade while distinguishing their conduct from the fidelity demanded by their faith.
Catholic moral analysis distinguishes personal, or subjective, guilt from the ongoing effects of historical wrongdoing. The ITC states that descendants do not inherit the personal responsibility of their ancestors. But the consequences of wrongdoing may persist: a past injustice can continue to burden communities, shape relationships, and leave what the document calls a form of shared moral memory. People today need not confess that they personally committed an ancestor’s sin in order to acknowledge a continuing responsibility to address its effects.
That distinction prevents two distortions. One is inherited personal blame: treating present people as personally guilty simply because they belong to a group associated with past wrongdoing. The other is historical amnesia: assuming that because perpetrators have died, nothing remains to be repaired. The ITC’s account allows for a present-day responsibility grounded not in inherited guilt but in solidarity with those harmed, in the enduring effects of past actions, and in the possibility of choosing whether to perpetuate or remedy those effects.
Reparation is more than a general expression of regret. In the ITC’s account, a request for forgiveness presupposes acknowledgment of responsibility, and acts of reparation should be based on an accurate historical and theological assessment. The appropriate recipients must be identified with discernment. Where possible, those defining acts of repair should engage in joint research and listen to the legitimate requests of the people addressed. Dialogue and mutual reconciliation are desirable, but reciprocity is not an absolute condition: a gesture can be made freely as an act of love even when the other party cannot or does not reciprocate.
The sources do not prescribe a universal financial formula, a single institutional remedy, or a specific reparations program. They do, however, support several moral criteria:
Catholic responsibility for slavery should be faced without either self-exoneration or collective accusation detached from evidence. The Church’s historical efforts to protect enslaved people matter, but so does the participation of baptized people in a trade John Paul II called a sin against humanity and God. The Catholic path is to investigate the record honestly, confess wrong where responsibility is established, distinguish inherited consequences from inherited personal guilt, and pursue forms of repair proportionate to the harm and shaped, where possible, in dialogue with those affected. The goal is not self-recrimination for its own sake, but repentance that produces truth, justice, reconciliation, and a more faithful defense of human dignity.