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 CCCB.

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. What can be returned to its rightful owners should be, he said.

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 will be kept.

Read the Joint Statement of the Holy See and the CCCB:

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

Learn about the CCCB’s work to walk alongside Indigenous Peoples:

• In English: https://www.cccb.ca/indigenous-peoples/
• In French: https://www.cecc.ca/peuples-autochtones/

Expert restorers work in the conservation laboratory for ethnological materials at the Vatican Museums in this file photo from 2013. 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. (CNS photo/courtesy Vatican Museums)

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© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2025 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.

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