Absolutely. In addition, the concept of pure chattel slavery was probably not what the Pope had in mind. Slavery had died out in Europe long before and had only been revived in the course of ransoming the hostages that the Muslims had taken - and the Muslims did practice pure chattel slavery, where the slave was considered simply a piece of property. However, in the Catholic world, the slave had certain rights (religious instruction, baptism, marriage, the right to own property, buy his freedom, not to be sold without his family, etc.). This certainly was not always respected - the Portuguese completely ignored these requirements, for example - but theoretically, from the Pope’s point of view, slavery would have been more like a cross between serfdom and long-term indentured servitude.
I guess I can understand it better in the case of somebody who’d never actually seen the US system in operation. The thing that always amazes me are some of the defenders of the South who declare that things were just great on the plantations and the master was really solicitous of the slaves and it was all just one big happy family. I actually heard an elderly docent in a museum say this - and the museum was in South Carolina, of all places, where the slaves on the rice and cotton plantations received such notoriously awful and brutal treatment that it even led to the famous Stono Rebellion. The slaves captured after the rebellion was put down were beheaded and their heads were put on stakes along the road as a warning.
You’d think that would be enough to make people see the reality of slavery, but as you say, there’s a lot of regional defensiveness and of course the rose-colored glasses of time. Naturally, nobody wants to think that they are descendants of people who treated other human beings like this.
The slaves in Portuguese slave-ships might disagree.
However, in the Catholic world, the slave had certain rights (religious instruction, baptism, marriage, the right to own property, buy his freedom, not to be sold without his family, etc.).
How often was this the case? Any data? I'd like some sources to verify authenticity of this claim.
This certainly was not always respected - the Portuguese completely ignored these requirements, for example - but theoretically, from the Pope’s point of view, slavery would have been more like a cross between serfdom and long-term indentured servitude.
Excuses... excuses. I'd rather wager that the Vatican was sensitive to the inflows to its coffers from the Spanish and Portuguese empires that thrived on slave labor.
Besides, I think you're underestimating what the Pope and the Catholic Church would have known about the condition of the slaves in the Americas, including the United States, and the Latin regions. It was the 1860s, give or take a few years, for crying out loud, and America was not behind any "iron curtain".
It appears ridiculous that the Pope would know so little about the pitiful condition of the slaves in America, in particular, and the Americas, in general.
The treatment of slaves varied from place to place. In the upper south, especially in Virginia, many slaves were in pretty goos shape, because their masters hired them out. Plus there were many free blacks. All and all their status was not much worse than it would be under segregation. Futher South, of course, things were not good, and to be sold South was something that Virginia slaves dreaded. It was no accident that the Confederacy was first formed by the southern tier or that States Rights was the motive that brought the upper South into the Confederacy. Probably if Lincoln had not decided to resupply Ft. Sumter instead of letting it go, Virginia might have stayed in the Union. But Davis made the real mistake by ordering the attack. Without that attack, Lincoln would not have had an army at his diposal, for it was the Northern response to that attack and to Virginia’s decision to secede
thereby endangering the capital, that brought a northern army into the field. And for all the deprecation of McClellen for his ultimate failure, it also brought him to the head of the Army of the Potomoc, which soon became a cohensive fighting force under his skillful command.