Pope Leo XIII described African tribes as barbaric brute animals

Evidence

It is quite telling that Hegel would rely on missionary accounts to legitimize his Eurocentric perception of African alterity. Most importantly, missionaries were not an exception in their perception of Africa, as the case of Pope Leo XIII shows. In his January 8, 1889, “Bref” to Van Aertselaer, the Superior General of the Order of “Coeur Immaculé de Marie” (Scheut-les-Bruxelles), the Pope exhorted the missionaries to bring the “savage people of black Africa” to the light of the Gospel, politeness and Christian civilization. The Pope states explicitly that these barbaric African tribes live at the level of brute animals and should be helped to rise to the freedom of the children of God. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 675

Categorization

• XREF: A papal document using the exact dehumanizing rhetoric that reinforces the reader’s understanding of how the church participated in colonial ideology alongside secular philosophers.