Pope Leo XIV has made a historic apology for the role the Holy See played in legitimizing slavery. Leo’s own family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners.
Papal infallibility is about what the popes teach, not about what the popes do. There are some controversies about whether popes in the past have taught things that are contradictory, such as John XXII with the Beatific Vision controversy, or Honorius with failing to reject Monophysitism (which opponents of papal infallibility would strengthen to saying that the pope taught monophysitism, not just that he failed to reject it, based on his anathemization in the subsequent council of Chalcedon).
IMO this opens up an interesting question of to what extent Alexander VI and previous popes that allowed slavery (or actively gave orders that would see it expanded) were teaching when doing anything at all. But I don’t think it’s necessarily contradicting the understanding of infallibility that the Church has held since Vatican II, which means that this shouldn’t bring anyone from believing in Catholicism to not believing in Catholicism (unless they’re really, really racist… which actually maybe does include a lot of people)
edit: I think I may have been a bit too broad about what I conveyed to count as infallible? Basically, the main points of papal infallibility are that the Pope cannot teach a heresy (so e.g. imagine tomorrow the pope sent out a letter saying Jesus isn’t God), and has the ability to declare certain facts to be absolutely true (so canonizing people as saints, or declaring dogmas which has only happened twice and probably won’t happen again for a while). That being said, the pope does have the ability to declare something and ask every faithful Catholic to assent their faith to it, only for a later pope to change it. So if 50 years from now, China is the only functioning country, and the pope comes out and says “yeah Marxist socialism isn’t really that bad” that technically doesn’t go against papal infallibility. It’s weeeeird.
Papal infallibility is about what the popes teach, not about what the popes do. There are some controversies about whether popes in the past have taught things that are contradictory, such as John XXII with the Beatific Vision controversy, or Honorius with failing to reject Monophysitism (which opponents of papal infallibility would strengthen to saying that the pope taught monophysitism, not just that he failed to reject it, based on his anathemization in the subsequent council of Chalcedon).
IMO this opens up an interesting question of to what extent Alexander VI and previous popes that allowed slavery (or actively gave orders that would see it expanded) were teaching when doing anything at all. But I don’t think it’s necessarily contradicting the understanding of infallibility that the Church has held since Vatican II, which means that this shouldn’t bring anyone from believing in Catholicism to not believing in Catholicism (unless they’re really, really racist… which actually maybe does include a lot of people)
edit: I think I may have been a bit too broad about what I conveyed to count as infallible? Basically, the main points of papal infallibility are that the Pope cannot teach a heresy (so e.g. imagine tomorrow the pope sent out a letter saying Jesus isn’t God), and has the ability to declare certain facts to be absolutely true (so canonizing people as saints, or declaring dogmas which has only happened twice and probably won’t happen again for a while). That being said, the pope does have the ability to declare something and ask every faithful Catholic to assent their faith to it, only for a later pope to change it. So if 50 years from now, China is the only functioning country, and the pope comes out and says “yeah Marxist socialism isn’t really that bad” that technically doesn’t go against papal infallibility. It’s weeeeird.