According to the diocese’s official website, the permanent Catholic parishes are located in Helsinki, Turku, Jyväskylä, Tampere (with chapels in Vaasa and Pietarsaari), Kouvola, Kuopio, and Oulu.
“A parish priest on Sunday will say three to four Masses. One Mass is in the parish, but another Mass is 200 kilometers from the parish, and perhaps the third Mass is 150 kilometers from the parish, and so we travel a lot by car, by train,” the bishop added.
Finland is a traditionally Lutheran country; however, in many ways, it retains unique links with the Catholic tradition that has made greater ecumenical dialogue possible.
Juurikkala, a native of Helsinki and a priest of Opus Dei in Rome, spoke with CNA about his journey toward the faith and the unique ecumenical atmosphere that characterizes the Church in Finland.
“In the last couple of decades, there has been a growing sense of friendship, especially between the Lutheran, Orthodox, and Catholic bishops, priests, and pastors,” he said.
Both for Juurikkala and Goyarrola the unique status and historical legacy of Finnish Lutheranism have facilitated greater dialogue and mutual intelligibility with Catholicism.
Noting that in Finland, the Protestant Reformation took the form primarily of a “political reformation,” Goyarrola said Finnish Lutherans “pray[ed] to the Virgin Mary, the saints, and there were tabernacles all around Finland more than 100 years after the Reformation.”
“The Lutheran Church in Finland is the closest Lutheran Church in the world to the Catholic Church,” the bishop added.
Juurikkala observed that the Catholic Church and the Finnish Lutheran Church also had a common “way of understanding the Eucharist and communion; it’s not so radically reformed in many other places.” He added that there’s also a “strong sense of the episcopal office,” which positions it “much closer to Anglicanism in that sense. It’s a strong sense of the episcopal office and kind of the church hierarchy and the notion of priesthood.”
Juurikkala grew up in what he described as a “humanistic family” where there was an emphasis on “humanities, literature, and culture,” but “there was really nothing, no Christian element in our life apart from the general, you know, Western culture.”
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The Finnish priest noted that in Finland, especially during the 1980s to the early 2000s, “the Catholic Church was very invisible in the society.”
But, in the past 20 years there has been a shift in the Church’s presence in the Nordic country, brought in part by the advent of social media and the proliferation of the internet, he said.
“We see clearly in Finland that with the younger generations, there’s a lot of openness toward spirituality in general and interest in religions,” Juurikkala said. “There were some studies by some sociologists since in the last couple of weeks they published a study showing that the most religious group now in Finland is teenage boys.”
Matthew Santucci is a CNA Rome correspondent based in EWTN’s Vatican bureau. He grew up in Connecticut and has been living in Rome since 2020. He has a B.A. in History from Fordham and an M.A. in International Relations from Luiss Guido Carli.
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