Vatican City: Pope Leo XIV has presented sixty two indigenous artefacts from the Vatican Museums to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, offering them as a gesture of respect, dialogue and ongoing commitment to healing with Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

 Pope welcomed Bishop Pierre Goudreault, president of the Canadian bishops, along with Archbishop Richard Smith and Fr Jean Vézina, for a meeting in the Apostolic Palace on Saturday morning. During the audience, he formally entrusted the artefacts to the Canadian Church.

The gift follows the path opened by the late Pope Francis during his 2022 visit to Canada, his meetings with Indigenous communities and the 2023 Declaration on the Doctrine of Discovery. Pope Leo XIV expressed his hope that the transfer of these objects would stand as a concrete sign of fraternity and mutual understanding.

According to a joint statement from the Holy See and the Canadian bishops, the artefacts are an important testimony to the meeting between Christian faith and the diverse cultures of Indigenous Peoples. They were originally sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925 for the Vatican Missionary Exhibition, promoted by Pope Pius XI. They later became part of the Anima Mundi ethnological collection of the Vatican Museums.

The handover comes during the Jubilee Year of 2025 and marks the centenary of the historic missionary exhibition. Each object is accompanied by records held by the Vatican Museums that confirm its origin and the circumstances of its arrival in Rome a century ago.

The Canadian bishops said they are committed to safeguarding and preserving the artefacts in close cooperation with Vatican cultural authorities. They emphasized that their responsibility is to ensure the items are treated with respect and maintained in a way that honours the communities they came from.