Connections and collections: The pope, the prime minister and the ethics of diplomatic gift exchange - ABC Religion & Ethics

Australia Broadcast Center

16-06-2025

Whether you are Catholic or not — and despite the competing demands of the never-ending attention economy — chances are that you, like us, were glued to your news feeds last month as Pope Leo XIV was inaugurated and led his first mass. For a couple of weeks our screens were saturated by striking images of the ancient rituals as well as drone-eye views of the 200,000 people drawn to experience the event in St Peter's Square.
Of the hundreds of images that we saw throughout these papal proceedings, there was one that struck us as particularly noteworthy. It was that of newly re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's private audience with the new pontiff on 19 May. The photograph shows the pope holding a painting by Ngarrindjeri artist Amanda Westley that had been given to him by Albanese on behalf of the Australian people. The photograph captures a personal experience as well as formal transaction — an agreement to act in good faith — between nations and their leaders.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese presents Pope Leo XIV with a painting by Amanda Westley called 'Raukkan' — the Ngarrindjeri word for 'meeting place' — at the Apostolic Palace on 19 May 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool / Getty Images)
The human experience of exchange that is captured in this photograph is also reflected in Westley's artwork. Called Raukkan — the Ngarrindjeri word for 'meeting place' — the painting emphasises the importance of working towards culturally respectful processes of understanding and communication. The photograph indicates the full range of human experience — from feelings of hopefulness to histories of loss — that accompany all forms of cultural exchange, including those carried out in the name of colonial progress.
The photograph, and the painting it shows, offers a tantalising insight into ritual aspects of Leo's inauguration. It also signals the importance of exchange in cultural diplomacy more broadly.
The giving and receiving of gifts
The pope's extensive programs of meetings with dozens of world leaders and 150 formal delegations beyond the formal mass would have resulted in hundreds of gifts being exchanged. Images of the events provide a small window into the gifts that the new pope received — they included a Chicago Bears T-shirt with Leo's name on it from the US Vice President that honoured the pope's early years in the American city.
Beyond the carefully curated official images distributed by Vatican Media, not much public information is available about gifting between the pope and heads of state. This is a shame because objects play a significant role in shaping human identity, culture and social relationships. Gifts also convey important information about how the giver wishes to be seen as well as who they are representing.
A spokesperson for the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet would only confirm that the prime minister received three gifts from the pope: a terracotta plaque/artwork called The Care of Creation ; a book called L'Appartamento delle Udienze Pontificie ( The Pontifical Apartments used for Audiences ); and a 'Vatican Museum Edition Pocket Emptier'. They would not answer questions about the collection that holds the items gifted from the pope to the prime minister, the history of this important collection, where it is held, or even how Australians might learn about or access items in this historical collection which is held in their name. They would not describe the gifts.
There is, moreover, only sparse public information about the process that led to the selection of Westley's painting. We understand that the piece was purchased from the Gallery of Small Things in Canberra, but that neither the artist nor the gallerist were advised about the reason for the purchase. It was such a surprise to the artist to learn from social media that her painting had been gifted that she did not initially believe the work to be hers.
'The soul of the world'
Research into the Vatican Museums, in contrast, tells us something about how popes have received and stored gifts over the centuries from heads of state, dignitaries and other delegations.
Located inside Vatican City, parts of the Vatican Museums have been home to previous popes as their Apostolic Palaces. They were built around St Peter's Basilica, which was constructed on the burial site of Saint Peter, a place of pilgrimage for the Catholic world. The Basilica we saw in media coverage of the pope's inauguration was initially planned by Pope Nicholas V in the fifteenth century, then designed and decorated by famous Italian Renaissance masters, artists, sculptors and architects.
The museum was founded in the early sixteenth century by Pope Julius II, who opened some of the private spaces including the Sistine Chapel to the public. For the first time, visitors were able to experience masterpieces like the Greek marble sculpture Laocoön and His Sons and a suite of rooms decorated by Renaissance master Raphael, including his fresco, School of Athens .
The statue of 'Laocoön and His Sons' on display in the Museo Pio-Clementino, a part of the Vatican Museums, on 4 August 2012, in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Lucas Schifres / Getty Images)
Rather than being just one museum, Vatican Museums is a complex of 26 museums and areas that hold tens of thousands of objects and artworks amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries. Of particular relevance to Australia is a lesser-known department called Anima Mundi — Peoples, Arts and Cultures , an ethnographic museum, established in 1926 but which dates back to gifts sent from the Americas to Pope Innocent XII in 1691. Today, Anima Mundi includes roughly 80,000 artefacts (a number that includes individual items such as small pre-Columbian pottery fragments, for example).
It also houses gifts received by pontiffs throughout past centuries as well non-European art and a collection of Indigenous Australian artefacts. This collection was assessed in 1986 by the then Director of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Professor Warwick Dix, who concluded that there were no human remains, or sacred objects of concern. Indigenous peoples, their rights and responsibilities are becoming increasingly important which is reflected in the growing engagement between communities with museums and collections. Reconnecting world collections with the communities they came from is now also seen as essential, to guide ongoing discussions of care, for exhibitions and future direction of curatorship or possible claims of repatriation for this collection and many others.
Although not every object gifted to popes ends up in the official Vatican collections, official gifting has always been part of historical and contemporary diplomacy. An exchange of ideas and good will between state representatives, including with the Vatican, gifting has been associated with the projects of spreading religious as well as political ideas. A gift of state often aims to capture the essence of a nation. They may be chosen for showcasing local cultures and unique traditions or craftsmanship. Often, gifts accepted into the Vatican collections are valued for representing different or shared forms of spirituality, which may explain their designation in the ethnographic (non-European) museum of Anima Mundi .
Gifts, attention and accountability
Popes since Pope Pius XI have travelled extensively and shared and received gifts as part of their work. The most travelled pope was Pope John Paul II, who famously travelled to 129 countries during his 26-year papacy. During a visit to Australia in 1999, he received gifts including an oil painting on wood in the shape of a coolamon by Eastern Arrernte woman Kathleen Wallace from Ltyentye Apurte, Central Australia, called She Brings God's Word .
Popes also commonly receive gifts from visiting delegations, as was the case during the recent inauguration of Pope Leo XIV. For the 2010 canonisation of Australia's first saint, Sister Mary McKillop, Pope Benedict XVI received gifts that included an acrylic painting on canvas entitled Pilgrimage created by Murri artist Yvonne O'Neill. The painting has concentric circles with connecting pathways that represent the journey lines or pilgrimage made by the Australians from St Joseph's Nudgee College in Brisbane and the Australian Catholic University who travelled to the Vatican for this event. About her painting, O'Neill said that 'the process of creating this painting helped to deepen my understanding of the Catholic faith by providing a tangible opportunity for reflection.'
As O'Neill's statement suggests, the gifts have significance that extends far beyond the ritual of exchange that is staged for official photographers. Many of the gifted artworks that have been created in recent years by First Nations artists — including Yvonne O'Neill, Kathleen Wallace and Amanda Westley — convey power and authority over land. Their work demands something in return from the person who is in receipt of their art. Even where the artist has not been present for the exchange, the ties to Country that are represented becomes part of the contract of symbolic reciprocity that is a key feature of diplomacy. They ask for attention and accountability — by the recipient of the gift as well as the world looking at the visual record of the event.
One of the stones of the winds that adorn the square of St Peter's Basilica, one of the most visited places in the world and in Rome for its immense artistic and architectural treasures. (Beto Creative / iStock Unreleased / Getty Images)
What this all means, in a sense, is that the gifts and the official images become witness to an agreement between contemporary heads of state, especially in the absence of further public information. They also — and more importantly — stand in for the artist and the communities represented in paintings. Father Nicola Mapelli, who was director and curator of Anima Mundi for 15 years (2009–2023), refers to the items in this museum as 'cultural ambassadors', which would seem to recognise this role.
Diplomatic gift exchange was not invented last month with the inauguration of the new pope. Contemporary gifts made by Indigenous artists carry the legacy of colonisation, which was also a process of cultural transfer. The ethics of gift exchange need to be discussed more openly. This might include more open public discussion about how and why certain gifts are selected to represent a nation. It might include more transparency about what Australia does with official gifts and information about how the public can access them.
Most of all, discussion about diplomatic gift exchange needs to move beyond the superficial idea that it represents a symbolic form of reciprocity to articulate the loss of real agency, sovereignty and power over the land that has been painted in the three artworks by Yvonne O'Neill, Kathleen Wallace and Amanda Westley.
Katherine Aigner is a Research Fellow in Repatriation and Natural History at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. For over 10 years she worked at Anima Mundi — Peoples, Arts and Cultures on re-connecting their Indigenous collections with source communities. Her books include Australia: The Vatican Museums Indigenous Collection and Oceania and Island Southeast Asia.
Kylie Message is Professor of Public Humanities and Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. She is the author of books including Museums and Social Activism: Engaged Protest, Collecting Activism, Archiving Occupy Wall Street and Museums and Racism.