Vatican Returns 62 Artifacts to Indigenous Peoples of Canada

On November 15, the Vatican returned 62 historical artifacts to the Indigenous peoples of Canada in a historic gesture of goodwill. According to the Associated Press, with this step, the Catholic Church effectively acknowledges its role in the suppression of the culture of the Indigenous peoples of North and South America.

The artifacts and their accompanying documents were personally handed over by Pope Leo XIV to a delegation from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during a special reception organized in the Vatican.

According to a joint statement by the Vatican and the Canadian Church, the returned items are considered a gift and a "concrete sign of dialogue, respect, and brotherhood." These valuable items were for many years part of the ethnographic collection of the Vatican Museums, known as the Anima Mundi Museum.

This collection had recently become the subject of intense discussions and disputes in the Vatican, especially against the backdrop of broader museum discussions concerning the return of cultural property seized from Indigenous peoples during the colonial era.

It should be noted that the majority of the items in the Vatican's collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries in 1925 to participate in an exhibition organized in the Vatican Gardens.