The Vatican Museums are among the world’s most popular, featuring vast art collections, including masterpieces by Michelangelo and Raphael, and drawing more than six million visitors every year.
But one exhibit in Vatican City is garnering attention for the wrong reasons.
The Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum holds thousands of Indigenous artifacts that were taken from communities across Canada by Catholic missionaries a century ago. Indigenous Peoples have long called for the artifacts to be repatriated, and in 2022, Pope Francis pledged to finally return them to Canada.
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But following his death in April and the election of Pope Leo XIV, Indigenous leaders now worry Pope Francis’s promise may die with him.
“It could just be swept under the rug,” said Gloria Bell, a Canadian art historian, author and assistant professor at McGill University, who has Metis ancestry. “These belongings were stolen from Indigenous communities.”
In 1924, Pope Pius XI …