Vatican

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.

The items, including an Inuit kayak, are part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.

Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday it has been working with Indigenous groups on returning the items to their “originating communities.” It said it expected the Holy See to announce the return. Vatican and Canadian officials said they expected 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 restitution negotiations.

Doubt cast on whether the items were freely given

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.

The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.

The return of the items in the Vatican collection will follow the “church-to-church” model the Holy See used in 2023, when it gave its Parthenon Marbles to the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece. The three fragments were described by the Vatican as a “donation” to the Orthodox church, not a state-to-state repatriation to the Greek government.

In this case, the Vatican is expected to hand over the items to the Canadian bishops conference, with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities, a Canadian official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are not concluded.

What happens after the items are returned

The items, accompanied by whatever provenance information the Vatican has, will be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and Indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated, down to the specific community, and what should be done with them, the official said.

The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who decided what would be returned, but said the total numbered “a few dozen.” The aim is to get the items back this year, the official said, noting the 2025 Jubilee which celebrates hope but is also a time for repentance.

This year’s Jubilee comes on the centenary of the 1925 Holy Year and missionary exhibit, which is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary has been virtually ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates a lot of anniversaries.

The Assembly of First Nations said some logistical issues need to be finalized before the objects can be returned, including establishing protocols.

“For First Nations, these items are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian Press.

Gloria Bell, associate professor of art history at McGill University who has conducted extensive research on the 1925 exhibit, said the items were acquired during an era of “Catholic Imperialism” by a pope who “praised missionaries and their genocidal labors in Indigenous communities as ‘heroes of the faith.’”

“This planned return marks a significant shift in the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and perhaps the beginning of healing,” said Bell, who is of Metis ancestry and wrote about the 1925 exhibit in “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — King Charles III plans to visit Pope Leo XIV next week in the Vatican as the first reigning English monarch since 1534 to pray in a service with the pontiff.

Charles, along with his wife, Queen Camilla, will visit the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday. They will appear with the pope during a service on Thursday at the Sistine Chapel, where a special seat has been created for Charles.

The chapel was dedicated on Aug. 15, 1483. Michelangelo painted the ceiling from 1508 to 1512.

Henry VIII split from the Vatican 22 years later.

Buckingham Palace on Sept. 26 announced the state visit to the Holy See for late October in the church’s 25th Jubilee Year to “celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the Jubilee year’s theme of walking together as ‘Pilgrims of Hope.'”

The royal couple had a private meeting with Pope Francis on April 9 in celebration of their 20th wedding anniversary. It took place at Casa Santa Marta hospital in Rome, 12 days before he died.

In 1961, Queen Elizabeth II was the first British monarch since the Reformation to visit the Holy See. Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022, and Charles became king.

“It marks a historic moment in the journey of reconciliation between our Churches,” Archbishop Flavio Pace said in a Vatican press briefing Friday. “It celebrates how far we’ve come — and offers hope for the future.”

This gathering will bring together members of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, of which the king is the supreme governor.

“This will be the first state visit, since the Reformation, where the pope and the monarch will pray together in an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel, and the first time the monarch will have attended a service in St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, a church with an historic connection to the English crown,” a Buckingham spokesman told the Guardian.

They also will visit the adjacent Benedictine Abbey. This church, which contains the tomb of St. Paul, had been associated with the English monarchy dating to medieval and Anglo-Saxon rulers who helped with the upkeep.

King Charles will also be honored with the title of Royal Confrater, “recognizing the long-standing ties between the British Crown and the Benedictine abbey attached to the basilica,” Vatican News said.

During the service with the pope, there will be a hymn by Saint Ambrose of Milan sung in an English translation by Saint John Henry Newman, who was canonized in 2019. King Charles attended that event.

Music will be provided by the Sistine Chapel Choir, alongside choristers from the Chapel Royal at St. James’ Palace and the Choir of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The king and queen will also meet Vatican officials.

The Vatican said the “two central themes of the Royal visit are Christian unity and care for the planet.”

The Roman Catholic Church has approximately 1.4 billion members with 20.4% in Europe, including 6.2 million baptized Roman Catholics in England and Wales, and 676,000 in Scotland.

The Church of England is the largest Christian denomination in Britain with 13.3 million followers. The church originated in the break from the Vatican and features Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

ROME — The Vatican took the unusual step on Monday of announcing that it had named judges to decide the fate of a famous ex-Jesuit artist, whose mosaics decorate basilicas around the world and who was accused by more than two dozen women of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse.

The case of the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik badly tarnished the legacy of Pope Francis, given suggestions that the Jesuit pope, the Jesuit religious order and the Jesuit-headed Vatican sex abuse office protected one of their own over decades by dismissing allegations of misconduct against him.

The Vatican office that manages clergy sex abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the five judges named to hear the Rupnik case in a canonical court include women and priests who don’t hold jobs in the Vatican bureaucracy.

It said that such a composition was “done in order to better guarantee, as in any judicial process, the autonomy and independence of the aforementioned court.”

The statement suggested an implicit recognition that prior to now, the Vatican’s handling of the Rupnik file had been anything but autonomous or independent.

Famous artist accused

Rupnik’s mosaics grace some of the Catholic Church’s most-visited shrines and sanctuaries around the world, including at the shrine in Lourdes, France, in the Vatican, a new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil, and the chapel of Pope Leo XIV’s own Augustinian religious order in Rome.

The Rupnik scandal first exploded publicly in late 2022 when Italian blogs started reporting the claims of nuns and other women who said they had been sexually, spiritually and psychologically abused by him, including during the production of his artwork.

Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order soon admitted that he had been excommunicated briefly in 2020 for having committed one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes — using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. But he continued working and preaching.

The case continued to create problems for the Jesuits and Francis, though, since more women came forward saying they too had been victimized by Rupnik, with some of their claims dating back to the 1990s.

The Jesuits eventually kicked him out of the order after he refused to respond to allegations by about 20 women, most of whom were members of a Jesuit-inspired religious community that he co-founded in his native Slovenia, which has since been suppressed.

The Vatican initially refused to prosecute, arguing the women’s claims were too old. The stall exposed both the Vatican’s legal shortcomings, where sex crimes against women are rarely prosecuted, and the suggestion that a famous artist like Rupnik had received favorable treatment.

Trial about to start

While Francis denied interfering in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press, he eventually caved to public pressure and waived the statute of limitations so that the Vatican could open a proper canonical trial.

Two years later, the Vatican statement on Monday indicated that the trial was about to start. The judges, appointed on Oct. 9, will use the church’s in-house canon law to determine Rupnik’s fate, though it’s still not even clear what alleged canonical crimes he is accused of committing. The Vatican statement didn’t say. He hasn’t been charged criminally.

To date, Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations and refused to respond to his Jesuit superiors during their investigation. His supporters at his Centro Aletti art studio have denounced what they have called a media “lynching.”

Some of Rupnik’s victims have gone public to demand justice, including in a documentary “Nuns vs. The Vatican” that premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. They welcomed word on Monday that the trial would finally start, attorney Laura Sgro said.

“My five clients requested 18 months ago to be recognized as injured parties in the proceedings, so we hope that their position will be established as soon as possible,” Sgro said in a statement. “They have been waiting for justice for too many years, and justice will be good not only for them but also for the church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s internal legal system doesn’t recognize victims of abuse as parties to a canonical trial but merely third-party witnesses. Victims have no right to participate in any proceedings or have access to any documentation.

At most, they are entitled to learn the judges’ verdict. Unlike a regular court, where jail time is possible, canonical penalties can include sanctions such as restrictions from celebrating Mass or even presenting oneself as a priest, if the judges determine a canonical crime has occurred.

Legal hurdles to justice

But it’s not even clear whether the Vatican considers the women to be abuse “victims” in a legal sense. While the Holy See over the last 25 years has refined the canonical rules to prosecute priests who sexually abuse minors, it has rarely prosecuted sex-related abuse cases involving women, contending that any sexual activity between adults is consensual.

The Rupnik case, though, also involves allegations of spiritual and psychological abuse in relations where there was an imbalance of power. It’s one of many such #MeToo cases in the church where women have said they fell prey to revered spiritual gurus who used their power and authority to manipulate them for sexual and other ends.

The Vatican, though, has generally refused to prosecute such cases or address this type of abuse in any canonical revisions, though Francis authorized a study group to look into allegations of “false mysticism” before he died.

Leo has expressed concern in general that accused priests receive due process. But he had firsthand experience dealing with an abusive group in Peru that targeted adults as well as minors, including through spiritual abuse and abuse of conscience.

In a letter earlier this year to a Peruvian journalist who exposed the group’s crimes, Leo called for a culture of prevention in the church “that does not tolerate any form of abuse — whether of power or authority, conscience or spiritual, or sexual.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Carlo Acutis, a digital pioneer, used his computer skills to spread Catholic teaching globally.

A London-born Italian teenager, known as “God’s influencer”, who was an early adopter of the internet to spread Catholic teachings, has been made the church’s first millennial saint at a ceremony led by Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.

Leo canonised Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 aged 15, in a ceremony attended by thousands on Sunday in St Peter’s Square. At the Mass, the pontiff also canonised Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1924 but was widely recognised for his charitable work.

During a speech at the event, Leo credited Acutis and Frassati for making “masterpieces” out of their lives, warning congregants that the “greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan”.

Often seen photographed in his casual outfits, with scruffy hair, T-shirts and sunglasses, Acutis cuts a different figure from the church’s saints of the past who were often depicted in solemn paintings. This has built a global following for Acutis, with the church intending him to be a more relatable saint for digitally-focused young people today.

Leo said Acutis and Frassati’s lives are an “invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces”.

Acutis was born in London in 1991 but moved early on in his life to the northern Italian city of Milan with his family, where he lived until he died of leukaemia in 2006.

As a teenager, Acutis taught himself coding and programming, using the skills he had acquired to document recognised church miracles to spread Catholic teaching globally. His pioneering digital efforts took place at a time when literacy around those subjects was not widespread.

He was also believed to have regularly attended church services, been kind to the homeless and children who suffered bullying, which endeared him to Catholic youth globally.

Shortly after he died, Antonia Salzano, Acutis’s mother, began advocating globally for her son to be recognised as a saint, which requires that he carry out miracles during his life.

Pope Francis, whose death in April this year led to a delay in the saint-making ceremony for Acutis, said the teenager carried out two miracles during his life. According to the Catholic News Agency, Acutis healed a boy who had a birth defect affecting his pancreas and a girl who sustained an injury in Costa Rica.

In a 2019 letter to Catholics, Pope Francis acknowledged Acutis’s efforts, saying, “It is true that the digital world can expose you to the risk of self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure.” He added, “But don’t forget that there are young people even there who show creativity and even genius. That was the case with the Venerable Carlo Acutis.”

Acutis’s body, encased in wax, lies in a glass tomb in Assisi, a medieval town in central Italy, which is a pilgrimage site visited by hundreds of thousands of people annually. Our Lady of Dolours Church in London, where he was baptised, has also attracted growing numbers of visitors. A part of his heart has been removed from his body as a relic and has been displayed at churches globally.