A Canadian art expert is challenging the Vatican's official account of how it acquired tens of thousands of Indigenous artifacts from countries around the world — including Canada.

In the early 1920s, Pope Pius XI sent out a call to Catholic missions around the world to donate artifacts, including Indigenous cultural belongings, to a 1925 Vatican Mission Exposition.

"Basically, they were looking for anything and everything related to mission life and related to Indigenous life during that time period," said Gloria Bell, an assistant professor of art history at McGill University and a Terra Foundation fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Fonds de recherche du Québec.

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