Georgetown University and the Jesuits have pledged $27 million to a charity to support the descendants of enslaved people who were sold in the nineteenth-century to fund the school.
The Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation said the gift includes $10 million from the University in Washington, DC and $17 million from the Jesuits in both money and plantation land where people were enslaved.
These contributions “are a clear indication of the role Jesuits and other institutions of higher education can play in supporting our mission to heal the wounds of racism in the United States, as well as a call to action for all of the Catholic Church to take meaningful steps to address the harm done through centuries of slaveholding,” said Monique Trusclair Maddox, a fourth-and fifth-generation descendant and chief executive of the foundation.
In 1838, the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved children, women and men from Jesuit plantations in Maryland to pay off university debts.
The Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation invests in descendants’ education, funds programs and community leaders engaged in anti-racism advocacy, and supports elderly descendants.
The foundation says there are about 10,000 living and deceased descendants of the Jesuits’ slaves. Georgetown President John J DeGioia said, “It is an honour for our university to have the opportunity to contribute to their efforts.”
Fr Tim Kesicki, SJ, who chairs the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Trust, said it is important to right past wrongs.
In Canada, Catholic bishops are still involved with ongoing searches for Indigenous graves and documentation of deaths at Church-run residential schools, set up to assimilate Indigenous people.
No human remains were found in last month’s excavation of a Catholic church basement on Pine Creek First Nations lands in Manitoba, after the community asked an archaeological team to search for any missing children who might have died decades ago in the community’s former residential school.
In summer 2022, ground-penetrating radar discovered 71 anomalies on the lands of Pine Creek First Nations.
Most were located in known burial areas on the grounds of the former Catholic-run Pine Creek Residential School, but there were 14 anomalies in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, prompting fears the church held hidden graves.
Loading ...
