Jesuits to raise $100m in reparations for descendants of slaves kept by the order

Money will be invested in efforts to enrich the Black community

Rashema was assigned a mentor when she arrived at Georgetown (AFP/Getty Images)

Jesuit priests in the US have announced they will raise $100m to pay the descendants of slaves who were historically imprisoned by the clergy members.

The Jesuits – a Roman Catholic order founded by St Ignatius of Loyola, St Peter Faber and St Francis Xavier in 1541 – established the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation, a partnership between descendants of both enslaved peoples and the people who enslaved others.

“In a landmark undertaking in the pursuit of racial healing and justice, descendants of ancestors enslaved and sold by the Jesuits and the Jesuits of the United States have announced a partnership to create the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation,” the Jesuits said in a statement on Monday.

JPMorgan Chase is reportedly supporting the project.

According to The New York Times, the effort is among the "largest efforts by an institution to atone for slavery" and seeks to raise $100m.

“This is an opportunity for Jesuits to begin a very serious process of truth and reconciliation,” Rev Timothy P Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, said. “Our shameful history of Jesuit slaveholding in the United States has been taken off the dusty shelf, and it can never be put back.”

Even with the scope of the project, its stated goals still fall below the $1bn that descendants of the enslaved have called on the Jesuits to raise. The Jesuits said they saw the $1bn as a long-term goal.

The Jesuits have acknowledged and attempted to atone for the organisation's actions in the past. In the 1960s, Jesuits in Maryland established the Carroll Fund for Black students.

The fund was used as a way for the Jesuits to take the money from sales of their plantation land and establish scholarships for Black students who wanted to attend Jesuit-founded universities. Some money was used for unrelated issues.

According to the foundation, the descendants of enslaved individuals have rejected cash settlements, choosing instead to use the money as significant investment capital into projects aimed at improving the Black community.

The Jesuits used slave labour to support the clergy and its mission. Slaves were used to finance and build the nation's first Catholic university, which is now known as Georgetown University.

The Georgetown Memory Project, a nonprofit organisation, has identified approximately 5,000 living descendants of those enslaved by the Jesuits.