On February 22, three workers fled from a labour lodge in Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul state, and reported to the police that they were submitted to slave labour by an employment company that provides workers to wineries Salton, Aurora, and Cooperativa Garibaldi.

The prosecutors discovered that 207 laborers, most of them recruited in Bahia state, were forced to work from 5am to 8pm and had only one day off each week.

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At the time, church leaders and historians said it would be the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to make amends for the buying, selling and enslavement of Black people in the United States.

But 16 months later, cash is only trickling in.

The Jesuit priest leading the fund-raising efforts said he had hoped that his order would have secured several multimillion-dollar donations by now, in addition to an initial $15 million investment made by the order.

Instead, only about $180,000 in small donations has flowed into the trust the Jesuits created in partnership with a group of descendants whose ancestors were enslaved by the catholic priests.

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