The 272 Quotes

“Income from the Maryland province had already helped finance the school that would become Saint Louis University in Missouri and established the Washington Seminary, which later became Gonzaga College High School, in the nation's capital. It also supported Georgetown Preparatory School, a private Catholic high school now located in North Bethesda, Maryland, which was once part of Georgetown College. ...

Meanwhile, Jesuits based west of the Mississippi River, who also relied on slave labor, ran colleges in Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

“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

“This community participated in the institution of slavery," said Dr. DeGioia, making his announcement at Georgetown 's Gaston Hall before a crowd of hundreds of students, faculty members, and descendants, including Melissa and her mother. "This original evil that shaped the early years of the Republic was present here. We have been able to hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore and deny this truth." But the time had come, he said, to recognize that truth and take action. "As a community and as individuals, we cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history. We must acknowledge it.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

“By the time freedom finally came to the Mahoneys, the Jesuits had received more than $130,000 from the 1838 sale, about $4.5 million in today's dollars.

The money enabled Georgetown to survive and thrive and help stabilize the Maryland provinces precarious finances.”
― 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

“The Catholic Church that Mulledy loved believed that Black people had eternal souls that should be nurtured. So they tended to the souls of the Black people on the plantations even as they bought and sold their bodies. The buying and selling of human beings was no sin in the eyes of the church. American slavery, which had fueled the expansion of the church in the United States, was simply not a priority in Rome.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

“Where slavery exists, beggars are rarely found," he [Jesuit William Mobberly] wrote. "We must therefore conclude that slavery is not only lawful, reasonable and good, but that it is also necessary.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

“The priests in Maryland, who relied on the proceeds derived from slave labor and slavery, built the nation's first Catholic college, the first archdiocese, and the first Catholic cathedral and helped establish two of the earliest Catholic monasteries. Even the clergymen who established the first Catholic seminary operated a plantation and relied on enslaved laborers. ...

Yet enslaved Black men, women, and children remain invisible in the origin story traditionally told about the emergence of Catholicism in the United States.”
― Rachel L. Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church