Pope Leo XIV gifts 62 indigenous artefacts to Canadian Bishops

Pope meets with Fr Vézina, Bishop Goudreault and Archbishop Smith @Vatican Media

Source: Vatican Media

This morning, in the Apostolic Palace, Pope Leo received in audience Bishop Pierre Goudreault, Bishop of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), accompanied by Archbishop Richard Smith, Archbishop of Vancouver, and Fr Jean Vézina, General Secretary of the CCCB. During the audience, the Pope gave the CCCB 62 artefacts belonging to the ethnological collections of the Vatican Museums.

Following the late Pope Francis' Apostolic Journey to Canada in 2022, his various audiences with indigenous communities, and publication of the Declaration on the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, Pope Leo XIV desires that this gift represent a concrete sign of dialogue, respect, and fraternity.

According to the joint statement of the Holy See and the CCCB, this is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artefacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the indigenous peoples.

The sixty-two artefacts, coming from different communities, are part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, encouraged by Pope Pius XI during the Holy Year, to bear witness to the faith and cultural richness of peoples.

Sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925, these artefacts were subsequently combined with those of the Lateran Ethnologic Missionary Museum, which then became the "Anima Mundi" Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums.

The Holy Father's gift takes place in the context of the Jubilee of 2025, which celebrates hope, and the centenary of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition.

These artefacts, accompanied by information in the possession of the Vatican Museums, which certifies their origins and the circumstances of their transportation to Rome for the 1925 Exhibition, have now been given to the CCCB.

The Canadian Bishops affirmed that they, in a spirit of authentic cooperation and dialogue with the Directorate of Cultural Heritage of Vatican City State, are committed to ensuring that these artefacts are properly safeguarded, respected, and preserved.