In 2016, the Religious of the Sacred Heart “convened a committee to examine the society’s role in racism and enslavement. The fact that the sisters had once owned 150 enslaved people wasn’t hidden, but it also had not been looked at in detail,” according to the report.

Earlier, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, the Sisters of Loretto, and the Dominican Sisters of St. Catharine “gathered at a church in Bardstown, Kentucky, which had been built by enslaved people, and asked the descendants of the people they had owned for forgiveness.”