A collection of Inuit artifacts have been discovered in a vault in the Vatican and could be loaned to Canada, a curator says.

The pieces are part of a group of items the Vatican acquired from Catholic missionaries for an exhibition in 1925.

Some of the objects, including a kayak from the Western Arctic, are rare.

For 80 years, the items have been stored in Rome, where little is known about them.

They were uncovered last fall when a Toronto real estate developer decided to investigate the collection, hoping it might be worth bringing to Canada.

Since then, Ken Lister, a curator with the Royal Ontario Museum who specializes in Inuit art, has travelled to Rome to look over the collection.

He said while he did a brief inspection, it will take more work to find out what else might be there.

Lister said the documentation on the collection is poor, with little indication of where many pieces came from or who collected them.

"All this would provide us with information about where we could find information about those particular objects," he said. "So it would be a great collection to get our teeth into in terms of researching."

Only five other examples of this style of kayak are known to exist, Lister said. He also saw what looked like carvings from Pangirtung.

Lister hopes to get a loan to be able to examine the ivory sculptures, drums, wooden masks, sleds and tools in more detail. The Vatican seemed interested in the possibility, he said.