Rachel Swarns, a contributing writer for The New York Times and NYU journalism professor, has written The 272: The Families Who Were Sold and Enslaved to Build the American Catholic Church.
In 1838, the Jesuits sold 272 of their slaves to save Georgetown University. Swarn’s book, according to NPR, focuses “on generations of one family that had several members among those 272 people.”
“I’m a practicing Catholic,” Swarn told NPR. “As a Black Catholic, I didn’t always see myself in the Church … But now I see myself in the Church and these families who were so determined to hold onto their faith and to make the Church true to what it said it was — a universal church, a church that welcomed and accepted everyone. That has been really inspiring to me.”
“The Church itself meant a lot to these families,” she said. “The Church was not in their minds, you know, controlled by these sinful men who did these things. The Church was more than that. They could not control the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
In a 1996 article, Father Joel Panzer explored the anti-slavery teachings of various popes, including Pope Gregory XVI, the Pope at the time of the 1838 sale.