The Vatican has returned 62 indigenous artifacts to Canada, 100 years after they were taken from tribes to appear in a 1925 missionary exhibition in Rome that displayed over 100,000 items from cultures around the world. Pope Francis gave the items to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on Saturday, with plans to return them to their original native communities, describing the gesture as “a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity” following his historic 2022 apology to Canada’s First Nations for the church’s role in the residential schools programme. Among the treasures coming home is an Inuit kayak historically used to hunt whales in Canada’s far north and a set of embroidered gloves from the Cree Nation, items that had been held in the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection known as the Anima Mundi museum.
The artifacts were taken to Europe during a time when Canadian law and Catholic decrees prohibited native spiritual practices, leading to a ban on certain ceremonial items, though the church has characterized them as “gifts” from tribal leaders despite the obvious power imbalance at the time. During Pope Francis’s “penitential pilgrimage” across Canada in 2022, when he offered apologies to local tribal leaders, the communities requested the return of their sacred items. The tribes have prepaid the cost of repatriation and plan to hold ceremonies before the artifacts can be officially returned after their December 6th flight from Rome. Canada’s Foreign Minister praised the move as “an important step that honours the diverse cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples and supports ongoing efforts toward truth, justice, and reconciliation,” marking a powerful moment when sacred items torn from their communities a century ago finally begin their journey home.
