2017-01-19 13:43:00

Finnish ecumenical delegation makes annual visit to Vatican


(Vatican Radio) An ecumenical delegation from Finland met with Pope Francis on Thursday, marking the feast day of their country’s patron saint, the 12th century Saint Henrik.

While around three quarters of the population belongs to the Lutheran Church, Catholics in Finland make up a tiny minority of about 15.000 faithful, led by their first native bishop of Helsinki since the Reformation, Teemu Sippo. The delegation visiting the Vatican this week includes Bishop Sippo, together with the Lutheran bishop of Turku Kaarlo Kalliala and the Finnish Orthodox Metropolitan Elia of Oulu.

In his words to the group, the Pope noted that Christians in Finland are celebrating the centenary of the Finnish Ecumenical Council, as well as marking the centenary of their nation as an independent state. May this anniversary, he said, “encourage all the Christians of your country to profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ – as did Saint Henrik so zealously – offering a witness of faith to the world today and putting that faith into practice through concrete acts of service, fraternity and sharing”.

To find out more about this traditional ecumenical encounter, Philippa Hitchen talked to Mgr Matthias Turk, who deals with Catholic-Lutheran relations for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

Listen: 

Mgr Turk says it is a special coincidence that the feast day of the patron saint of Finland, St Henrik, is on the January 19th which coincides with week of prayer for Christian unity. For more than 30 years, he says, they have been coming with an ecumenical pilgrimage and “we’re very glad to have arrived at such a level of communion and ecumenical  fellowship which is very dear to us”.

Mgr Turk points out that in past years the Reformation Jubilee was considered to be “a very German festival” but nowadays, as Rev Martin Junge of the Lutheran World Federation has said, the Reformation has become both international and ecumenical as well. So from Rome, on the international Catholic level, he says, we “took many occasions, in different countries, to commemorate this important event, not only for the Protestant and Lutheran churches, but also for Catholic church, as a reform of a Church that permanently needs to be renewed”.

Mgr Turk speaks about the “3 fold approach to Reformation year” which is firstly to be grateful and give thanks for the communion that has grown up between Christians over the past 50 years of dialogue, secondly to ask forgiveness for the wrongdoing and guilt which has accumulated on both sides, and thirdly to renew “our common witness for Christ to world of today” which is suffering in so many ways.

Recalling Pope Francis’ visit to Sweden last September for a joint commemoration of the Reformation, Mgr Turk says the pope rightly agreed to the invitation of the LWF which is another indication of “the communion that has grown among us”. The results of the dialogue, he says, show that “all those controversial themes from the past, like scripture and tradition, sacramental life, even ministry of the Church” have come closer to a more mutual understanding so that “unity lies ever closer before us”. The pope’s intention in travelling to Lund, where the LWF was founded, he says, was “to acknowledge what has been achieved and orient ourselves to the new questions and next steps of our ecumenical journey that lie before us”.








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