‘An unsettling colonial collection’: should the Vatican return items ‘gifted’ to it from Indigenous peoples?

As Rome prepares to celebrate 400 years of St Peter’s Basilica, a prized collection of artefacts acquired by Catholic missionaries is staying out of the spotlight. We take a closer look In the four-hour queue to get into the Vatican Museums last week, everyone around me was fixed

As Rome prepares to celebrate 400 years of St Peter’s Basilica, a prized collection of artefacts acquired by Catholic missionaries is staying out of the spotlight. We take a closer look In the four-hour queue to get into the Vatican Museums last week, everyone around me was fixed on seeing the Sistine Chapel. A couple of people mentioned the Raphael rooms, and someone else was looking forward to the classical sculpture of Apollo.

But no one else was headed where I was going: the Anima Mundi, formerly the Ethnological Museum, home to around 80,000 objects from across the globe, many of which were “gifted” to the Catholic church in Rome by Indigenous peoples at a time when its missionaries were powerful, and sometimes dubious, figures in their far-flung communities. The collection is housed a few steps inside the main door of the Vatican Museums, in a basement: and, sure enough, on the day I visit, it’s almost empty. Not for want of fascinating objects: among the items on display are handsome balsa wood carvings made by the Emberá people of Panama and Colombia, each representing protective and ancestral spirits; a crocodile figure from Papua New Guinea, believed to represent the creator of all things; and sculptures from central Africa denoting dead children (mothers would care for them, because they were believed to retain the spirit of the deceased offspring).

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