Pope returns 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada as part of reckoning with colonial past

The Vatican on Saturday returned 62 artifacts from its vast ethnographic collection to Indigenous peoples from Canada, as part of the Catholic Church's reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.

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Pope Leo XIV gave the artifacts, including an iconic Inuit kayak, and supporting documentation to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said it would return the items to Indigenous communities "as soon as possible." A joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church described the pieces as a "gift" and a "concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity."

The artifacts are expected to land in Montreal on Dec. 6 and be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa, which will arrange for them to be "reunited with their originating communities," said Pomeline Martinoski, director of communications for the Canadian bishops conference.

For a century, the items were part of the Vatican Museum's ethnographic collection, known today as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens. The Vatican insists the items were "gifts" to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church's global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.