Better late than never, Jesuit-run Georgetown University’s President John DiGioia has acknowledged that the school has “been able to hide from the truth” that it was built, literally, on the institution of slavery.

Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past

(from the New York Times today, Friday, Sept. 2, 2016)

Decades ago, when a small group of us asked the Maryland Jesuits to confess openly those crimes of their predecessors; we were rebuffed (apparently out of financial liability concerns). We saw it as a moral issue, and saw scandal in the Jesuits’ refusal to show moral leadership before they were finally forced to. Jesuit alumnus Ray McGovern wrote about the backstory when the news first broke last spring: See:

The Shame of the Jesuits