Pope Francis wearing a headdress presented to him by Chief Wilton Littlechild at Maskwacis First Nation during the pope's pilgrimage of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Photo: Vatican Media (25 July 2022)

Pope Leo XIV greets Canadian Archbishop Richard Smith of Vancouver, a member of the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council, in the library of the Apostolic Palace. The pope gave the Canadian bishops 62 artifacts that will be returned to Indigenous communities in Canada. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media (15 Nov. 2025)

Pope Leo XIV meets with leaders of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and gives the conference 62 artifacts that will be returned to Indigenous communities in Canada. With the pope, from the left, are: Father Jean Vézina, general secretary of the CCCB; Bishop Pierre Goudreault of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Québec, CCCB president; and Archbishop Richard Smith of Vancouver, a member of the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media (15 Nov. 2025)

A wampum belt, from what is now Quebec, symbolizing Indigenous people forming an alliance with French Catholic colonizers is seen in this file photo from the Vatican Museums' ethnological collection. Photo: CNS/Vatican Museums (2008)

Expert restorers work in the conservation laboratory for ethnological materials at the Vatican Museums in this file photo. Many of the 100,000 artifacts sent to the Vatican via missionaries over the centuries are made of delicate materials such as ostrich plumes, leather and glass beads. Photo: CNS/Vatican Museums (2013)

Archives

2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1991
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1983
1982
1968
1967
1964

Bluesky

We invite you to visit our new Bluesky feed, a social media platform that replaces Twitter/X. Bluesky has reintroduced content moderation and eliminated advertizing. Follow us now on Bluesky.

Subscribe to our news

Email Address

First Name

Last Name

Search the website Rechercher dans le site

Pope returns Indigenous artifacts to Canada from Vatican Museums

Pope Leo XIV fulfilled a promise made by the late Pope Francis to return to Canada’s Indigenous communities artifacts — including an Inuit kayak, masks, moccasins, and etchings — that have been held by the Vatican for more than 100 years.

The pope gave 62 artifacts to the leaders of the Canadian bishops’ conference Nov. 15, the Vatican and the bishops’ conference said in a joint statement.

The bishops “will proceed, as soon as possible, to transfer these artifacts to the National Indigenous Organizations,” which will ensure they are “reunited with their communities of origin,” said a separate statement from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope Leo “desires that this gift represent a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity,” the joint statement said. “This is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artifacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the indigenous peoples.”

The artifacts, which came from different First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities, “are part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, encouraged by Pope Pius XI during the Holy Year, to bear witness to the faith and cultural richness of peoples,” the joint statement said.

“Sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925,” it said, “these artifacts were subsequently combined with those of the Lateran Ethnologic Missionary Museum, which then became the ‘Anima Mundi’ Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums.”

Members of Canada’s Indigenous communities have been asking for years that the items be returned. In the spring of 2022, when community representatives visited the Vatican for meetings with Pope Francis before his trip to Canada, they visited the Vatican Museums and were given a private tour of the collection.

Pope Leo’s decision to give the artifacts to the Canadian bishops instead of to the government or to an Indigenous organization “is a tangible sign of his desire to help Canada’s Bishops walk alongside Indigenous Peoples in a spirit of reconciliation during the Jubilee Year of Hope and beyond,” said Bishop Pierre Goudreault, president of the Canadian bishops’ conference.

In 2023, the Vatican did something similar, giving the Orthodox Church of Greece three marble fragments from the Parthenon in Athens; the church then gave the marbles to the government.

Speaking to reporters in April 2023, Pope Francis had said the Canadian artifacts would be returned.

“This is the Seventh Commandment: if you have stolen something, you must give it back,” he said. What can be returned to its rightful owners should be, he added.

The return of the artifacts “is an important and a right step,” Joyce Napier, the Canadian ambassador to the Holy See, told Catholic News Service.

The artifacts will go first to Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, she said. There, the Indigenous communities, their experts and elders will try to identify them and their provenance and determine where they should be kept.

Read the Joint Statement of the Holy See and the CCCB:
• Joint Statement of the Holy See and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops
• Communiqué commun du Saint-Siège et de la Conférence Épiscopale du Canada

Posted: Nov. 15, 2025 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=14686
Categories: CNS • In this article: Canada, Indigenous peoples, Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV, Reconciliation Transmis : 15 nov. 2025 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=14686
Catégorie : CNS • Dans cet article : Canada, Indigenous peoples, Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV, Reconciliation