Pope returns artifacts to Indigenous peoples as part of reckoning with colonial past

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Saturday returned 62 artifacts to Indigenous peoples from Canada, a historic restitution that is part of the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.

Pope Leo XIV gave the artifacts, including an iconic Inuit kayak, and supporting documentation to a delegation of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is expected to return them to individual Indigenous communities. A joint statement from the Vatican and Canadian church described the pieces as a “gift” and a “concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity.”

The items were part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader