Vatican and the Canadian Church described the gesture as a gift and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity” with Indigenous communities.
The Vatican has returned 62 historical artifacts to Indigenous peoples in Canada, marking a significant step in the Catholic Church’s broader reckoning with its role in suppressing Indigenous cultures across the Americas. The development was reported by Arab News, which highlighted the symbolic weight of the repatriation and its connection to long-standing calls for reconciliation.
The handover took place on Saturday, when Pope Leo XIV presented the artifacts and accompanying documentation to representatives of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during a formal audience. In a joint statement, the Vatican and the Canadian Church described the gesture as a gift and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity” with Indigenous communities.
The returned items come from the Anima Mundi ethnographic collection of the Vatican Museums, a collection that has faced scrutiny for decades. Many of the pieces were originally sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exhibition, an event designed to showcase the Church’s global reach and the diversity of the peoples it evangelised. The Vatican maintains these objects were offered as “gifts” to Pope Pius XI.
However, historians, Indigenous leaders, and cultural experts have long questioned the voluntary nature of such gifts, pointing to the severe power imbalances present in Catholic missions at the time. These concerns are compounded by the Church’s participation in Canada’s forced assimilation policies, which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has described as “cultural genocide.” During this period, Indigenous spiritual objects were often confiscated, particularly under the 1885 potlatch ban, and many ended up in museums and private collections across Canada, the US, and Europe.
Momentum for the return of the artifacts accelerated in 2022, when Pope Francis met with Indigenous delegations who had travelled to Rome to receive an historic papal apology for the Church’s role in running Canada’s residential schools. During their visit, Indigenous representatives were shown several culturally significant objects—including an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, ceremonial masks and war clubs—and formally requested their repatriation. Francis later publicly supported returning such items on a case-by-case basis, saying that when a gesture of restitution is possible, “it is better to do it.”
The Vatican emphasised that the timing of the return is deliberate, coinciding with the Holy Year and marking exactly 100 years since the artifacts were first showcased in Rome.
In their statement, Vatican and Canadian church leaders said the transfer was “an act of ecclesial sharing,” and noted that the Canadian bishops are responsible for ensuring the artifacts are properly preserved and respected. They also confirmed that the ultimate custodians will be the Indigenous communities to whom the objects belong.
