Vatican City/CMEDIA: As part of reportedly the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in suppressing Indigenous culture in the Americas, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday returned 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada.
The returned artifacts by Pope included an iconic Inuit kayak, and supporting documentation to a delegation of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during an audience.
The pieces were a gift and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity,” according to a joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church.
As a highlight of 1925’s Holy Year, Catholic missionaries sent most of the items in the Vatican collection to Rome for an exhibition in the Vatican gardens.
Insisting that the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, the Vatican said that they wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they preached.
Historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long argued whether the items could really have been offered freely.
In those years, Catholic religious orders forced an assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions in Canada.
Negotiations accelerate on returning items
Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated in 2022 when the Pope met Canada’s Indigenous people.
Exactly 100 years after the 1925 exhibition where the artifacts were first exhibited in Rome, the items were given back during the Holy Year, Vatican said Sat.
“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,” said the joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church.
The items are expected to be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec to be identified by the experts and Indigenous groups as the origin of the location of these items, officials said previously.
Citing the 2023 repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the Vatican on Sat stated that Leo’s return of the artifacts concludes the “journey” initiated by Francis.
