The Vatican will return dozens of artefacts to indigenous groups in Canada as part of reconciliation

Vatican City (AP) – The Vatican is expected to announce that it will return a dozen communities wanted by the traditional role in Canada over the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping traditional culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.

The objects, including the Inuit Kayak, are part of the ethnographic collection of the Vatican Museum, known as the anima Mundi Museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the museum’s wider debate over the return of cultures taken from indigenous peoples during colonial times.

Negotiations for the return of Vatican assets after Pope Francis in 2022 met with indigenous leaders who went to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in Canada’s poor settlements in church schools. During their visit, they were shown other items in the collection, including wamp belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for their return.

Francis later said that he wanted to return things and others to the gathering of the Vietnamese for the situation, saying: “In a situation where you can come back to touch, it is better to do it.”

The Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishod said on Wednesday it was working with traditional groups to restore things to their “emerging” community. It is expected that it is sacred to see the return. The Vatican and Canadian authorities are expecting an announcement in the coming weeks, and that the items could arrive on Canadian soil before the end of the year.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported on the progress in the repatriation talks.

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for the 1925 exhibitions in the Vatican Gardens that filled the Holy Year that year.

Doubts are cast that things are freely given

The Vatican emphasizes the items “gifts” to Pope Pius Xi, who wanted to celebrate the world around the world, its missionaries and the lives of indigenous evangelical people.

But historians, indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether things could really be done so liberally, given the power imbalance at play in the Catholic movement at the time. During those years, Catholic religious orders helped enforce the Canadian government’s policy of eradicating indigenous cultures, which the CENADADA and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.”

The return of the material will follow the “To Church-to-Church” model the Vatican used in 2023, when it placed the marbles of its church in the Greek Orthodox Church. The three pieces are described by the Vatican as ‘contributions’ to the Orthodox Church, not the restoration of the kingdom to the Greek government.

In this case, the Vatican is expected to give things to the Conference of Canadian Bishops, with a clear understanding that the indigenous guardians will be the indigenous communities, said a Canadian official on Wednesday, speaking of the negotiators.

What happens after the items are returned

The objects, which correspond to any information indicated by the Vatican, will be taken first from the Canadian museum of history in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and indigenous groups will try to see where things came from, down in a specific community, and what should be done with them, said the official.

The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who made the decision to be returned, but said the total amount “

The purpose is to get things back this year, the official said, marking the Jubilee 1725, the centenary of the Holy year of 1925 was the reason for bringing things to Rome in the first place.

The 1925 exhibition is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary is ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates many anniversaries.

The Assembly of First Nations said some material issues need to be completed before the items can be returned, including establishing protocols.

“First of all, people, these things are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our culture and ceremonies and should be treated as important,” said national director Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian media.

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