Restitution of Indigenous and colonial-era artifacts is one of the many agenda items awaiting Francis on his trip to Canada.
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican Museums are home to some of the most magnificent artworks in the world, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to ancient Egyptian antiquities and a pavilion full of papal chariots. But one of the museum’s least-visited collections is becoming its most contested before Pope Francis’ trip to Canada.
Restitution of Indigenous and colonial-era artifacts, a pressing debate for museums and national collections across Europe, is one of the many agenda items awaiting Francis on his trip to Canada, which begins Sunday. Government agents confiscated items used in the ceremony and other rituals, and some of them ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections. The Vatican’s catalogue of its Americas collection, for example, features a wooden painted mask from the Haida Gwaii islands of British Columbia that “is related to the Potlatch ceremony.”
It is possible Indigenous peoples gave their handiworks to Catholic missionaries for the 1925 expo or that the missionaries bought them. But historians question whether the items could have been offered freely given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions and the government’s policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.
The Holy See’s Indigenous collection began centuries ago, with some pre-Columbian items sent to Pope Innocent XII in 1692, and has been amplified over the years by gifts to popes, especially on foreign trips. Of the 100,000 items originally sent for the 1925 exhibit, the Vatican says it has kept 40,000.
The catalogue also said the museum welcomes dialogue with Indigenous peoples, and the museum has held up its collaboration with Aboriginal communities in Australia before a 2010 exhibit. The collection’s director, Mapelli, a missionary priest and an associate visited those communities, took video testimonies and traveled the world seeking more information about the museum’s holdings.
Margo Neale, who helped curate the Vatican’s 2010 Aboriginal exhibition as head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges at the Australian National Museum, said it is unacceptable for Indigenous collections today to lack informational labels.
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