US EditionPope returns 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada as part of reckoning with colonial past
- On November 15, 2025, the Vatican returned 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada in Vatican City, formally transferring them to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
- Following Pope Francis' 2022 audiences with Indigenous leaders, talks intensified after his apology for residential schools, while most items were sent by Catholic missionaries for the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exhibition.
- The artifacts are held in the Vatican Museums' Anima Mundi ethnographic collection and include an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs and masks; the Vatican calls them `gifts` to Pope Pius XI, but historians and Indigenous groups question if they were freely offered.
- Experts will first examine the objects at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, and the CCCB pledged to safeguard them until transferring to National Indigenous Organisations soon.
- The move comes during the Jubilee of 2025 and the centenary of the 1925 exhibition, with a Vatican statement acknowledging complicity but not rescinding the papal bulls.
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120 Articles
Vatican Agrees to Return Indigenous Peoples' Artifacts
The Vatican returned 62 Indigenous artifacts to Canada on Saturday, including items such as an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs, and masks—many of which had been in Vatican museums for over a century. The artifacts were handed over to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which plans to...
The Vatican is returning 62 historical artifacts to Canada's indigenous peoples. One of the artifacts is a centuries-old Inuit kayak used in whaling. Pope Leo XIV is donating the artifacts to the Canadian Bishops' Conference, which will then return them to the indigenous communities "as soon as possible." The artifacts are expected to be flown to Montreal early next month, where they will first be sent to a historical museum. There, research wil…
Protothema
In 2022, Pope Francis apologized to Canada's indigenous peoples for the Catholic Church's role in boarding schools - On that trip, indigenous communities had demanded the return of the artifacts.
Vatican City, 15 Nov (EFE).- Leo XIV gave 62 pieces and relics of indigenous communities of the North American country to the Church of Canada this Saturday, which since 1925 were part of the collections of the Vatican Museums and whose return they had claimed representatives of native peoples of that country. The delivery took place this Saturday on the occasion of an audience of the Pope with the President and Secretary of the Episcopal Confer…
The Vatican on Saturday returned 62 artifacts from its vast ethnographic collection to Indigenous peoples in Canada, as part of the Catholic Church's process of confronting its role in the suppression of Indigenous culture in the Americas.
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