Catholic Jesuits are confessing their participation in slavery. Some wonder if revealing 'sinful past' is more PR than atonement

Joseph Stewart, a 79-year-old African American who grew up in the small town of Maringouin, Louisiana, has been a devoted Catholic his entire life.

"I was baptized a Catholic, raised a Catholic, almost went to seminary as a Catholic and I'm still a Catholic," Stewart said.

But on April 16, 2016, Stewart discovered a painful truth about the Catholic church's participation in slavery and his own connection to that recently uncovered history. It's a history that some residents of Phoenix also learned more deeply about during a recent visit by a Jesuit leader.

On that day in 2016 a friend called to alert Stewart to a front page story in the New York Times with the headline: "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?"

A photograph showed weathered headstones in a cemetery belonging to Immaculate Conception Church in Maringouin, Stewart's hometown in Louisiana.

Stewart recognized the cemetery and the church right away. He had attended the same church since he was baptized. And the cemetery was just steps from his family home. Stewart grew up walking the grounds, where his mother, father, brother and "a whole bunch of other relatives" are buried.

Through the article, Stewart learned for the first time that Catholic Jesuits had once owned slaves to work tobacco plantations in Maryland. In 1838, the Jesuits had sold 272 enslaved people to sugar plantations in Louisiana near Maringouin to save what is now Georgetown University from financial ruin. 

In the weeks that followed Stewart found out he had an even deeper connection to the sale of enslaved people by the Jesuits. He himself was one of the descendants.

Isaac Hawkins was the first name listed on the bill of sale. Hawkins, it turned out, was Stewart's great-great-great-grandfather. 

"It was a very personal and painful thing to learn," said Stewart, a retired corporate executive now living in Port St. Lucie, Florida. "But at the same time — try and understand the psychology I'm given here — it was a very joyous thing to learn in that I knew now where I came from."

New leadership: Catholic community of Phoenix celebrates new Bishop John P. Dolan

Stewart is now part of a unique partnership between the descendants of the enslaved people sold by the Jesuits and the descents of the Jesuits who enslaved them nearly two centuries ago.

The partnership is intended to expand public awareness about the Catholic Church's participation in slavery, and raise a goal of $1 billion to benefit descendants as part of process of truth, healing and reconciliation. 

The Jesuits made a pledge in March 2021 to raise $100 million toward the $1 billion goal within three to five years.

The fundraising has gotten off to a slow start. The initial $15 million deposited in the trust by the Jesuits has barely grown. Descendants are starting to wonder whether the Jesuits' public apology for the Catholic order's enslavement of their ancestors and promises to rectify the harms they committed were little more than hollow words. 

In a scathing letter to Catholic officials in Rome, Stewart and other descendants accuse the Jesuits of dragging their feet at a time when a decades-old national and global movement for reparations has gained momentum. 

"It is becoming obvious to all who look beyond words that Jesuits are not delivering in deed," Stewart wrote in the Aug. 3 letter to the Rev. Arturo Sosa, the head of the Jesuits in Rome. "No matter how well their intent, the Jesuits have not set up this partnership for success."

The letter refers to "hardliners" among the Catholic order who are opposed to efforts by Jesuit leaders to raise money to benefit the descendants of those who were enslaved.

"These men maintain the position that they weren't here during the Jesuit enslavement, never enslaved anyone and thus do not 'owe' anyone anything," the letter states.

Instead of cash reparations to benefit themselves, the descendants who partnered with the Jesuits agreed to create a trust intended to address the legacy of slavery and uplift future generations of descendants in three ways, said Stewart. He is the president and board chairman of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation.

More: 'Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.' is a smart satire that takes on megachurch scandal

First, interest earned from the trust will be distributed to groups dedicated to racial justice, Stewart said. Second, the trust will provide scholarships to support the educational aspirations of descendants and third, money will be used to provide financial support to elderly and infirm descendants.

The trust is intended to serve as a model for the country as the nation continues to struggle with the legacy of slavery, Stewart said.

"If we ever go through truth and reconciliation in a serious and meaningful way, many of the people who were standing on the sidelines saying, 'I wasn't here then, and I don't owe anybody anything', may come to appreciate the positive role they can play in making this country a better country for all Americans," Stewart said. 

To speed up the fundraising process, the descendants want the Jesuits to transfer proceeds from past and future sales of plantation lands, including $57 million the Jesuits made from the sale of some plantation lands in 2009 by Christmas of this year.

They want the Jesuits to deposit $100 million by next July; $500 million by July 2025; and $1 billion by July 2029.

'The work of justice is difficult'

The Jesuits are committed to following through with their promise, said the Rev. Tim Kesicki. He is the former head of the Jesuit conference of the U.S. and Canada, who helped broker the agreement. He's now leading the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation.

During a recent visit to Phoenix, however, Kesicki acknowledged that raising money for the trust has been difficult. One of the biggest obstacles has been convincing others  that they benefited from slavery "no matter how long ago that was."

"This is the work of justice and the work of justice is difficult," Kesicki said in an interview with The Arizona Republic, part of the USA Today Network. 

He said it should not be a surprise to Christians that the "progress of conversion" can be slow. Kesicki noted that when Jesus challenged the authorities of his day to make systemic change for justice, "they nailed him to a cross."

The Jesuits' commitment to raise $100 million within three to five years was historic, said Rachel Swarns, a journalism professor at New York University. She has written several articles for The New York Times about the Jesuits' participation in slavery, and the Catholic order's attempts to make amends with descendants.

"It was the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to make amends for participating in the American slave trade," Swarns said.

It's important to note that the descendants who partnered with the Jesuits do not represent all descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold by the Jesuits, Swarns said.

Other groups of descendants had sought reparations in the form of cash payments and are now unhappy with the descendants group that partnered with the Jesuits because so little money has been raised.

"There are some people who are not thrilled about this partnership and have raised concerns about this partnership," Swarns said.

Jesuit leader brings message of atonement to the West

Kesicki spent five days in Phoenix in August  visiting Brophy College Preparatory, a Jesuit high school. He has been visiting Jesuit schools in cities around the country to inform people about the Jesuits' participation in slavery and to generate more donations for the trust.

The Rev. William Muller, Brophy's vice president of mission and identity, said he invited Kesicki to speak to students because the Jesuits' participation in slavery is less known in the West.

He said he wanted Brophy students to learn about the Jesuits' "sinful past."

But he also wanted them to understand that "these men were not evil" but made "awful, terrible, sinful" decisions. He hopes students apply those lessons to their own lives to confront injustices taking place today where there's a "moral blindness."

Kesicki met with 300 Brophy students in classroom talks over several days.

Kesicki also spoke Aug. 25 at a community event held in a large hall inside Brophy's sprawling Spanish Colonial-style campus in north-central Phoenix.

Organizers set out about 150 seats for the event, but only about 25 people showed up, most of them faculty and some parents.

Bob Ryan, Brophy's principal, attributed the small turnout to the busy start of the school year, including a parents night held on campus the evening before.

Pain of slavery 'still burns in the hearts of many'

Kesicki opened the event with a prayer, asking the audience to "reflect upon and grow from a Jesuit sin that was over a century ago, but a sin that still burns in the hearts of many, especially those who know they descend from that sin."

The Jesuits' slave holdings in Maryland were part of much larger participation in slavery by the Catholic Church in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, Kesicki said.

Jesuits were among the first Catholics to come to the United States from England, Kesicki said. They settled in Maryland, where they owned a number of tobacco plantations in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to fiance the creation of missions including churches and schools. 

The Maryland plantations financed the beginnings of the school that became Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the nation's oldest Catholic university.

Enslaved people owned by the Jesuits worked on the tobacco plantations and built the missions, Kesicki said.

"When the Jesuits came, they assimilated with American culture, they assimilated with an American economy, an agrarian economy, and a big part of that assimilation was their participation in slavery, the using of enslaved persons for the profit of the tobacco plantations and the use of enslaved persons to build the missions for the Society of Jesus," Kesicki said.

When the tobacco industry declined, the Jesuit missions faced bankruptcy. To save Georgetown, Jesuit leaders agreed in 1838 to sell 272 enslaved people, among them men, women and children, to sugar plantations in Louisiana owned by Catholic landowners.

The architect of the sale was Thomas F. Mulledy, a Catholic priest and Jesuit who was president of Georgetown College as it was then known.

A hall at Georgetown named in Mulledy's honor recently was re-dedicated to Isaac Hawkins, the 65-year-old enslaved man whose name appeared first on the bill of sale, Kesicki said.

Slavery helped establish Jesuits in U.S.

The Jesuits participation in slavery wasn't limited to the colony that became Maryland. When Jesuits expanded westward, they brought with them enslaved people. St.Louis University, another Jesuit school, was also built using slave labor, Kesicki said.

Jesuits from France also settled in what is now Louisiana and also used slave labor, Kesicki said.

The bottom line is the use of slave labor helped establish the Jesuits in the United States, Kesicki said.

So "it's bigger than just Georgetown," Kesicki said.

Georgetown's connection to slavery remained largely buried in the school's archives until students, historians and genealogists began digging through the documents around 2015 and 2016. They found documents that helped identify descendants of those who had been sold and enslaved by the Jesuits.

During Kesicki's presentation at Brophy, a copy of one of those documents was projected on a screen overhead. 

"This is about the most pernicious document you will ever find in archives, especially Jesuit archives," Kesicki said. 

The document was a bill of sale listing the names, ages and surnames of the 272 people sold by the Jesuits in 1838.

"Let this document sink in," Kesicki told audience, which sat in silence amid a heaviness that filled the room. "You can see the magnitude of this sin. Of this sale. Of this history."

In exchange for the enslaved people, the Jesuits received about $115,000, equivalent to about $3 million to $3.5 million today, Kesicki said.

There about 10,000 descendants of the enslaved people sold by the Jesuits, about 3,000 of whom are alive today, Kesicki said. 

Jesuits apologized for slavery in 2017

In 2017, the Jesuits and Georgetown formally apologized for their participation in slavery during a special Mass attended by more than 100 descendants.

Kesicki was asked to deliver the apology. Before he spoke, one of the descendants, a Mary Williams-Wagner, read a quote by Frederick Douglass from the famous abolitionist and orator's book "Life of an American Slave."

Kesicki re-read the quote to the Brophy audience. He spoke in a slow deliberate cadence: “We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries and cradle-plunderers for church members.The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus."

"Let those words sink in," Kesicki told the Brophy audience. "We see the hypocrisy and the tragedy of Catholic priests, of Jesuit priests, holding human life enslaved and selling human life."

Jesuits' apology part of larger discussion over reparations

The Jesuit efforts to atone for the Catholic order's participation in slavery comes during long-standing discussions and debates over reparations that began at the end of the Civil War, said Rashad Shabazz, a history professor at Arizona State University who studies race and social justice issues.

In the decades since, the struggle over reparations has ebbed and flowed but has recently gained momentum again in the reckoning that has taken place in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, Shabazz said.

New research by scholars that has illuminated how descendants continue to be affected by slavery and how institutions such as the Jesuits built wealth from slavery has contributed to growing discussions over reparations, Shabazz said.

"Research over the past 10 to 15 years has really opened up new doors to understanding and implications about the impact, what it did to people, physically psychologically, how it broke up families, undermined the stability of Black people to have decent lives," Shabazz said. "And there is also the financial implications that slavery was the greatest wealth-generating resource in the history of the world for 500 years."

Shabazz said he remains cynical about the partnership that has been created by descendants of enslaved people and the Jesuits. 

For the descendants, "it's very clear what they want," Shabazz said. "They want reparations. They want acknowledgment. They want recognition. They want an apology. They want the church to to own their role in one of the greatest tragedies in human history and to be public about it."

But the Catholic Church, Shabazz said, seems more interested in carrying out a "public relations campaign" considering how little money has been raised and the church's unwillingness thus far to contribute proceeds from the sale of plantation lands to benefit descendants. 

"That's why I believe that part of this is a bit of a rhetorical strategy, a PR campaign, to demonstrate to the public that they are willing to own up to it, acknowledge it, but in the end it requires sacrifice and it doesn't seem like the church is willing to do that," Shabazz said.

The slow start to raising money also suggests that many Catholics are not interested in contributing. That lack of interest could be seen as a barometer for American attitudes towards reparations in general, Shabazz said.

"They might have an ethical or a religious or maybe even a political form of support for reparations but when it comes down to it, they're not willing to actually pay," Shabazz said. "And I think that speaks to a larger question. I don't think that's just the church. I think that is a national reality."

Howard Bell, a Black Catholic who graduated from Brophy in 1987 and who attended Kesicki's presentation, said the "money is almost secondary." He believes the money will flow as more people learn about the Catholic church's participation in slavery, and as the Jesuits attempt to atone for their part.

"First we need the recognition and the understanding that this is what the history is. We recognize it, and we apologize for it and this is how we bring people together," Bell said.

Kesicki rejected the notion that the Jesuits are simply engaged in a public relations campaign.

"There can be no public relations response. You are either committed or not," Kesicki said. "No one is served by saying, 'Well, we tried.' We have to be committed to do God's work, which is the work of justice."

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.