The Vatican returned 62 artefacts connected to the Indigenous peoples of Canada to the country’s Catholic bishops, offering what it called ‘a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity’, a statement said.
Pope Leo gifted the objects to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops following a meeting with its representatives including its president, Bishop Pierre Goudreault.
“The CCCB will proceed, as soon as possible, to transfer these artefacts to the National Indigenous Organisations (NIOs). The NIOs will then ensure that the artefacts are reunited with their communities of origin,” the Canadian bishops said.
Catholic missionaries sent the artefacts to Rome on the occasion of a 1925 exhibition held by Pope Pius XI that displayed more than 100,000 objects.
Nearly half of them later formed a new Missionary Ethnological Museum and were transferred to the Vatican Museums in the 1970s.
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