Pope Leo XIV has formally transferred custody of a historic collection of Indigenous objects—held by the Vatican Museums for the past century—to representatives of the Catholic Church in Canada, who will in turn return them to Indigenous communities across the country.
Among the items is a rare Western Arctic sealskin kayak, the most prominent of several hundred objects originally displayed at a Vatican missionary exhibition in 1925.
For years, the Métis National Council, the Assembly of First Nations, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami have urged the Vatican to repatriate the collection as part of ongoing efforts toward reconciliation related to residential schools.
The handover followed a meeting in Rome between Pope Leo XIV and senior members of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, including Pierre Goudreault, Bishop of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and president of the CCCB.
The objects, many of them extremely delicate, will be meticulously packed in preparation for their transport to Canada in early December. Upon arrival in Montreal, they will be transferred to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., where curators will assess and catalogue the collection before it is distributed to Indigenous communities across the country.
The kayak and roughly 200 other Indigenous items have been largely out of sight since their debut at the Vatican’s 1925 missionary exposition, part of a vast collection of more than 100,000 artifacts gathered at the request of Pope Pius XI.
Their repatriation marks a long-awaited achievement for Métis, Inuit and First Nations organizations, which only became widely aware of the collection after a 2021 Globe and Mail report. Since then, they had pressed the Vatican and Pope Francis—who died in April—for their return.
In 2023, Pope Francis, who had visited Canada the previous year to apologize for the Church’s role in residential schools, acknowledged the importance of repatriation, telling reporters that the Vatican and Canada were aligned on the issue. A year later, then–prime minister Justin Trudeau reinforced that message during a G7 meeting with the Pope, urging movement on returning the artifacts as part of reconciliation. Former foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly also raised the matter with Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin in April 2024.
Source: Global and Mail