Rachel L. Swarns

“Today, the Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination in the United States, with more than 60 million members, more than nineteen thousand parishes, and enormous influence in the nation's political, cultural, educational, and religious life. Americans often view it as a northern institution that has welcomed, educated, and nurtured waves of newcomers from Europe and Latin America. But there is a darker history both for the church and for our country: for more than a century, the American Catholic Church relied on the buying, selling, and enslavement of Black people to lay its foundations, support its clergy, and drive its expansion. Without the enslaved, the Catholic Church in the United States, as we know it today, would not exist.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

“Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston suspected that the Maryland Jesuits had been warned in advance that the pope intended to condemn the slave trade. He thought that they had scrambled to sell off their enslaved people to ensure that the sale was complete before the pope released his letter. Whether that is true or not remains unknown. But the Catholic clergy in the United States remained mostly silent on the subject of the pope’s letter.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church