On 15th November, the Vatican handed over 62 artefacts associated with the Indigenous people of Canada to the Catholic bishops of the country, claiming that the act was “an actual act of dialogue, respect, and fraternity,” a statement it said.

After visiting the representatives of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, including the president Pierre Goudreault, Pope Leo presented the objects to the latter.

“The CCCB will undertake, as early as possible, to hand these artefacts over to the National Indigenous Organizations (NIOs). The NIOs will subsequently make sure the artefacts are returned to their communities of origin”, the Canadian bishops declared.

The artefacts were brought to Rome by Catholic missionaries when they organized an exhibition in 1925 at which Pope Pius XI exhibited over 100,000 objects. Almost fifty of them were subsequently moved to the Vatican Museums in the 1970s as a new Missionary Ethnological Museum.

The apology by the late Pope Francis, in 2022, to the Indigenous people in Canada, before his visit to the country, was a historic one regarding the role of the Catholic Church in residential schools, where many children were abused and buried in unmarked graves.

The talks also included the repatriation of the native artefacts that the Vatican Museums possessed.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand was pleased by the action of the Vatican.

She posted it on X, “It was an important move that would respect the rich cultural heritage of Indigenous people and contribute to further action leading to truth, justice, and reconciliation.”