On July 18, 2022, a delegation from the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing, led by Kamm Howard, a Chicago businessman and director of Reparations United, and including Dr. Ron Daniels, convenor of the National African American Reparations Commission, and Nikole HannahJones, author of the “1619 Project,”1 met with Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council of Culture, at the Vatican. The purpose of the meeting was to begin a dialogue with the Catholic Church on its role in supporting and benefiting from the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its legacy. During the meeting they delivered a Presentment outlining the harms and offenses of the Church, the legacy resulting from those harms and offenses, and reparations measures that are needed for full repair and healing. The
Presentment calls on “the Holy See…to urgently lead the world in building a global culture of repair and healing and otherwise taking transformative action for Africa and its worldwide Diaspora….”2
