I n 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.

This figure in a frame is in a case of what are described as ‘artefacts … from a vast area: northern Namibia, Angola, Zambia and DR Congo’ … the figure in the frame is said to be ‘a ‘supernatural being’. Photograph: Joanna Moorhead

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.…