#140. Papal Apology and Its Implications on Decolonizing Mission

Also Announcing ACTS 11 Conference 2026

Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimise forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” … This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon. — Pope Leo XIV.

Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo’s new papal bull, arrives at a deeply significant moment in global history. The world is increasingly marked by fragmentation, violence, ecological crisis, xenophobia, nationalism, technological disruption, and deepening distrust between peoples and nations. Against this backdrop, Pope Leo’s emphasis on human dignity, dialogue, plurality, and shared moral responsibility offers a compelling theological vision for our time. Its language reflects a longing for a more humane and reconciled world capable of resisting the dehumanizing tendencies of modern political and economic life. For many Christians, especially those concerned with justice, peace, and the moral future of humanity, the document will rightly be received with gratitude and hope.

And yet, for many Christians shaped by the histories of colonialism and missionary expansion, Magnifica Humanitas also raises difficult questions that cannot easily be ignored.

As I read Magnifica Humanitas, I found myself reflecting on the historical memory of earlier papal decrees such as Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493) — bulls I talked about to a great extent in Decolonizing Mission. These documents granted theological legitimacy to conquest, territorial expansion, enslavement, and the subjugation of non-Christian peoples beyond Europe. They formed part of the theological architecture that helped shape the relationship between Christianity, empire, race, and colonial expansion for centuries to come.

The contrast between those earlier papal authorisations and the moral language of Magnifica Humanitas is striking. Where previous papal bulls helped sanctify conquest in the name of Christian civilisation, this new document speaks the language of dignity, mutuality, dialogue, and the safeguarding of humanity itself. Yet what makes this moment especially significant is that the Pope does not merely condemn slavery and subjugation abstractly. He explicitly acknowledges that ecclesiastical authority itself participated in legitimising forms of enslavement and domination.

That admission matters enormously.

Magnifica Humanitas recognizes that the Apostolic See itself “intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of ‘infidels.’” It further acknowledges that it took centuries for both society and the Church fully to recognize slavery’s incompatibility with the dignity of the human person. Most strikingly, the Pope describes this history as “a wound in Christian memory” and, “in the name of the Church,” asks sincerely for pardon.

This is a profound act of ecclesial self-examination.

For those of us engaged in questions of mission, colonial history, and global Christianity, this changes the conversation in important ways. The question is no longer simply whether the Church has acknowledged its complicity in histories of domination. Increasingly, it has. The deeper question now becomes: What does repentance require?

Can theological systems that once sacralized conquest simply be renounced rhetorically, or must mission itself now be fundamentally reimagined? If ecclesial authority once granted spiritual legitimacy to conquest and subjugation, what does faithful Christian witness look like after such acknowledgement? What kind of mission becomes possible after repentance?

These are neither anti-Christian nor anti-Catholic questions. The issue is much larger than Roman Catholicism alone. Protestant missionary movements later inherited many of the same assumptions regarding civilization, race, culture, and Christian expansion. The problem is not simply that Christians participated in empire. The deeper problem is that mission itself became imaginable through domination.

In my own work on decolonizing mission, I have argued that the European missionary movement did not emerge in isolation from empire, but was deeply intertwined with the political, military, economic, and civilizational ambitions of Christendom. The motivations behind Europe’s evangelistic expansion were rarely purely spiritual. Missionary activity frequently unfolded alongside conquest, trade, territorial acquisition, and imperial administration. The missionary, the merchant, and the soldier often arrived together.

The papal bulls did not merely permit this expansion. They sacralized it.

Dum Diversas, for example, authorized Christian rulers to “invade, search out, capture and subjugate” non-Christian peoples and reduce them to perpetual servitude. Such language reveals something profoundly important. The issue was not merely secular colonialism accidentally accompanied by religion. Ecclesial authority itself granted theological legitimacy to conquest. Christian mission and imperial expansion became mutually reinforcing realities.

This history matters because its consequences did not end with colonialism itself. Over time, the fusion of Christian civilization, European expansion, and theological superiority contributed to the development of racial hierarchies that continue to shape the modern world. Christianity did not invent racism. Nor were missionaries uniquely malicious people. Many embodied extraordinary sacrifice, compassion, courage, and devotion to Christ. Yet it is equally true that missionary imagination often operated within assumptions of civilizational superiority. To become Christian frequently meant becoming culturally European.

This is why the Church’s contemporary language of universal human dignity cannot be separated from the histories through which Christianity spread across much of the world. For many communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and among Indigenous peoples, Christianity is remembered not only as good news, but also as entangled with domination, cultural erasure, and racial hierarchy. Mission is still heard through memories of conquest.

That is why Magnifica Humanitas matters so much.

Its significance lies not only in its moral language, but in the possibility that it signals a deeper theological transition within global Christianity itself. The document gestures toward a form of Christian witness no longer dependent upon the assumptions of Christendom. Its language of dialogue, plurality, shared humanity, and mutual responsibility suggests the possibility of mission disentangled from civilizational supremacy.

But if that future is to emerge credibly, apology alone cannot be the end of the process. Repentance must become theological as well as rhetorical. The Church must ask not only what it did, but how certain theological imaginations made those actions conceivable in the first place.

The question before the Church today is therefore not whether mission should continue. Christianity is, at its heart, a missionary faith. The deeper question is what kind of mission the Church now imagines itself called to embody in a radically multicultural and postcolonial world.

Can mission be disentangled from domination? Can catholicity exist without supremacy? Can evangelisation be reimagined through humility, listening, hospitality, and mutual recognition rather than through conquest, control, and civilizational confidence?

These questions become especially urgent now that Christianity itself is no longer centred primarily in Europe or North America. The demographic and spiritual centre of gravity of the faith now lies increasingly in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and among migrant and diasporic communities across the world. The future Church is irreversibly multicultural, multilingual, and polycentric. In such a world, mission can no longer be imagined as the extension of one Christian civilisation to the rest of humanity.

Perhaps this is where the Church must recover something closer to the vision of Pentecost itself. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not erase difference through imperial uniformity. The Spirit spoke through many languages simultaneously. Unity emerged without cultural domination. Communion existed without erasure. The gospel became translatable without becoming monocultural.

The future credibility of Christian mission may therefore depend not on defending the innocence of the Church’s past, but on the courage to tell the truth about how domination became entangled with discipleship — and on whether the Church can now embody a form of mission shaped less by conquest and more by recognition, mutuality, repentance, and communion.

---

Save the Date: ACTS 11 Convergence 2

---

I’m delighted to announce Convergence 2.0: Mission, Migration and the Future of the Church, a two-day gathering hosted by the Acts 11 Project in partnership with CMS, taking place at Liverpool Hope University on 4–5 September 2026. This conference will bring together church leaders, theologians, mission practitioners, diaspora Christians, and scholars to explore how migration is reshaping the future of global Christianity and the mission of the Church in our time. I’m especially pleased to welcome keynote speakers Alexander Chow and Sheila Akomiah-Conteh, as well as many others. More details and registration information will follow soon, but for now, please save the date.