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Roman Catholicism adopted the distinctions of Roman civil law regarding slavery. Its core teaching until at least the nineteenth century was that there were several "just titles" one person could have to another person's labor for life.
Aquinas taught that the master of a slave mother had title to the lifetime labor of the mother's child.
European Catholic states, notably Spain and Portgual, were at the forefront of the trans-atlantic slave trade. The papacy supported this trade.
Catholic lay critics of the trade were subject to inquisition and their works were banned where Church authorities had the power to do so.
The rise of abolitionism as a popular cause did not move the church hierarchy to change its teaching or support those working for abolition. The Vatican only unequivocally condemned the variety of slavery once prevalent in the Americas after it had been legally abolished.
Prof. Gil Brodie's notes on the Catholic defense of slavery
Maxwell's "Slavery and the Catholic Church" (1976)