A chara, - I would like to congratulate Ms M. E. Synon for her enlightening article on Church and State (September 17th). She outlined the Catholic Church's attitude toward slavery in the 14th and 15th centuries. Yet it is interesting to note that many Christians in Africa in the 17th century were challenging the Papacy to reconsider the Catholic Church's process of evangelisation and the horrors of slavery.In 1684 Lourenco da Silva e Mendonca, an AfroBrazilian who claimed to be descended from the kings of Kongo in central Africa, arrived in Rome and brought a direct report to the Papal Curia of the cruelties inflicted on the slaves. Mendonca's supplications to Pope Innocent XI and a corroboration by Capuchin missionaries led to the condemnation by the Holy Office on March 20th, 1686 of the gravest opprobria of the Atlantic slave trade.Vested interests in church and state all over Europe and Africa and in the Americas, however, ensured that the papal condemnation was practically disregarded. The slave trade continued to engulf its millions of victims.An excellent account of the Catholic Church's attitude to slavery in the 17th century in Africa can be read in History Today, Volume 47 (1), January 1997, in an article entitled "The Kongo Kingdom and the Papacy" by Richard Gray. - Is mise,Sean C. De Bhulbh,South Circular Road,Dublin 8.