slavery

The canonization cause of Mother Mary Lange, founder of the world’s first sustained women’s religious community for Black women, has taken a step forward.

In the spotlight: Hawaiian volcanic eruption, Ratzinger prize winner, Kenyan acrobats

In focus: Vatican creche, marker honoring the enslaved, papal trip to Africa

The harmful effects racism has had on American society and how embedded racism is within both U.S. government systems and churches has been a concern of Pope Francis and many U.S. bishops.

Representatives of the Santa Marta group, an alliance of church and secular officials, including police, presented an action plan to combat human trafficking to the pope. Also pictured is Kenyan Judge Roselyn Naliaka Nambuye.

Joshua Johnson, the artist who painted the portrait, had been enslaved and became a self-taught artist regarded as the first professional African-American artist in the newly formed nation.

All of the essays are eye-opening, well researched and provide an education in Catholic history absent from college and other classrooms as recently as a decade ago.

The work of Georgetown University and the Jesuits in reckoning with the history of owning and selling enslaved people may hold lessons for the rest of the Catholic Church and American society.