‘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 lookIn 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…