VATICAN CITY, November 15. . Pope Leo XIV presented the cultural values of Canadian Indians to representatives of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops during an audience. This was reported by the Holy See Press Service.
“During the audience, the Holy Father introduced to the conference 62 artifacts from the ethnographic collection of the Vatican Museums,” the statement said.
The agency noted that the artifacts, previously owned by Canadian Indians, were transported to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925. Then in 1925, the artifacts were transferred to the Vatican Museums, where they were kept for about a hundred years.
October newspaper Globe and letter Citing sources in Ottawa and Rome, the Pope said the Pope's intention was to return Canadian Indian cultural values to Canada for Catholic Christmas.
For decades, Canadian Indians tried unsuccessfully to return these values to their homeland. The situation changed in May 2021, when more than a thousand unmarked graves of minors were discovered in Canada on the territory of three former boarding schools for Indian children overseen by the Roman Catholic Church. This news shocked public opinion, they asked the authorities to conduct excavations on the territory of all old educational institutions. There were also calls for the Roman Catholic Church to apologize to Canadian Indians, including then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In 2022, Pope Francis issued an official apology for the abuse of Indian children in Canadian residential schools, and in 2024, Trudeau, during a meeting with the pope, also called on him to return Canadian Indian cultural property stored at the Vatican.
