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It was a mixed bag. The Pope was in favor of an agrarian life-style that he felt was more humane and, like many people around him, felt that African Americans needed a paternalistic treatment to be introduced to American life. Granted, they were being brutalized, but both the Pope and, before him, Jefferson regretted this and felt that while slavery was not in itself good, the African slaves had been brought to this country and were an established fact here and therefore it was the responsibility of the people who had brought them here to maintain them and educate them so that one day they could be fully mature in American life.

LOL. And here I thought that the Pope was infallible. Plus, African slaves were not here to be educated and be allowed to "mature" in America life- they were here to be owned as slaves, plain and simple. If the Pope supported this evil, then he is just as guilty as the slave-owners.

Infallibility applies to doctrine, not to thought on social issues. The Pope knew only what people told him. Even Jefferson said that slavery was wrong, but that Africans were not prepared to deal with the society into which they had been brought against their will and thus it was the responsibility of whites to educate them and protect them from exploitation.

Jefferson seems to have done that with his slaves, and there probably were other slave owners who did. However, the worst ones (South Carolina, particularly) were people who didn’t even regard slaves as human. Certain Protestant counties in the South forbade (Protestant) religious instruction or baptism of slaves, threatening people who attempted to preach to slaves with the death penalty. This was never carried out, but the reason for it was that the slave owners felt that if a slave could be preached to and baptized, he might become a full human being and would have to be treated differently.

The Protestant “two creations” theory was an attempt to justify this, and because Protestants had no central authority to tell them this was nonsense, they had to fight it out between them.

If the Pope supported this evil, then he is just as guilty as the slave-owners.

Seeing as slavery existed for the vast majority of human history and was merely accepted as a fact of life, I greatly doubt that there is much guilt involved.