Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday he plans to use his visit with Pope Leo XIV to enlist from the homegrown pontiff, who has apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in slavery, support for the fight for reparations.The pope used his first papal encyclical to apologize for the role the church played in legitimizing what he called the “scourge of slavery” and failing to condemn it for centuries. He called the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”The papal apology was a welcome surprise for Black American Catholics, activists and scholars who have long demanded that the Catholic Church go beyond rote apologies for the involvement of individual Christians and atone for its own role in the colonial-era trade in human beings.Before boarding a flight to Rome for his visit with the pope, Johnson was asked whether he intends to ask Leo to use his pulpit to support reparations for local descendants of African American slaves.“That’s an important conversation. … Absolutely. … Yes. I want to be very clear about that,” Johnson said.The mayor said he plans to begin that difficult conversation by thanking the pope for recognizing “the harm that slavery caused across the globe” and in Chicago.Noting that America is just over a month away from celebrating its 250th birthday, Johnson said, “This nation is not what it is without the free labor and the forced labor of Black people.”Johnson said the pope’s apology and long-awaited recognition of the social and economic wounds that still linger from slavery is…
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