What role did the Jesuits play in the African slave trade?

Answer 1

Jesuits opposed slavery at every opportunity they could. They even built entire villages of "freemen" to integrate into the empires. Every Pope denounced slavery, and even threatened ex-communication for having slaves. - Written for "Christianity Today" by Stark

Avery Cardinal Dulles makes the following observations about the Catholic Church and the institution of slavery

1. For many centuries the Church was part of a slave-holding society.

2. The popes themselves held slaves, including at times hundreds of Muslim captives to man their galleys.

3. Throughout Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, theologians generally followed St. Augustine in holding that although slavery was not written into the natural moral law it was not absolutely forbidden by that law.

4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin were all Augustinian on this point. Although the subjection of one person to another was not part of the primary intention of the natural law, St. Thomas taught, it was appropriate and socially useful in a world impaired by original sin.

5. No Father or Doctor of the Church was an unqualified abolitionist.

6. No pope or council ever made a sweeping condemnation of slavery as such.

Protestant/hummanist/secularist version:

Jesuits were the only "monastical order" permitted to conduct "commercial trade" thus were the primary practitioners of the "slave trade", thus the term "the Jesuit slave trade". They were deeply involved with profiteering from it, and made large contributions of the wealth from these activities to the Vatican, who also had personal slaves (within the Vatican).

Jesuits owned and sold slaves, unavoidably profited from their transactions, and encouraged more human treatment of their conditions. - The Voice, Georgetown University

Hitler was a devout Roman Catholic, it has only been admitted recently, that he was NOT an "Atheist", as was promoted and claimed for nearly 40 years by people who knew this was a lie.

Whatever you wish to believe. That's the whole point of the disinformation. You'll have to "figure it out" on your own. The truth is probably all of the above, and a little bit that is too embarrassing to ever be admitted.