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Base trade in human beings carried on in the most barbarous fashion, those who wield power, those who sway empires, those who desire that the rights of nature and humanity be respected, and those who desire the progress of religion, to unite everywhere towards the abolition of this most shameful and most criminal traffic.

— Pope Leo XIII

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Source, in full

New Africa; an essay on government civilization in new countries, and on the foundation, organization and administration of the Congo Free State, THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT, Page 136. Leo XIII. re-echoed the cry of alarm raised by Leopold II of Belgium. in 1876.

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Slavery

More quotes by Pope Leo XIII

The best parent and guardian of liberty amongst men is truth.

Encyclical: Immortale Dei (1885)

Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others.

Rerum novarum (1891)

The worst kind of heretic is one who, teaching for the most part true Catholic doctrine, adds a word of heresy like a drop of poison in a glass of water."

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice.

Encyclical: Immortale Dei 31 (1885)

The sect of Freemasons grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pope Leo XIII (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.