Finland’s Catholic Church, just 0.2% of population, sees explosive growth from immigrants and refugees. Bishop Goyarrola fundraises in U.S. for schools, centers.
Newsroom (04/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) In a secular Nordic nation of 5.6 million where Catholics number fewer than 12,000, the Diocese of Helsinki is experiencing what its bishop calls a “spiritual tsunami.”
Bishop Raimo Goyarrola, the only Catholic bishop in Finland — a country that shares a 1,000-mile border with Russia — has been traveling across Texas and other parts of the United States seeking financial help for a Church that has grown explosively in the past five years, largely through immigration and refugee resettlement.
“It’s a growing Church, but it’s very poor, and filled with immigrants and refugees,” Bishop Goyarrola told CNA during a recent stop in Houston. “There are 125 different nationalities, and many different rites … Maronites, Chaldeans … It’s a richness, but also a pastoral challenge.”
Accompanying the bishop was Father Jean Claude Kabeza, vicar general of the diocese and pastor of the overcrowded St. Henry’s Cathedral in Helsinki. The Rwandan genocide survivor said more than 300 unbaptized adults are currently preparing to enter the Church — a figure he described as evidence of “booming” growth in a country where Catholics remain just 0.2 percent of the population.
Finland has only eight Catholic parishes. Four cannot cover their expenses. Masses are celebrated in 33 cities, but many families still travel up to 200 miles to attend Sunday liturgy — a distance the bishop jokingly calls a “blessed problem.”
Because Catholic churches are so scarce, the diocese rents worship space from 20 Lutheran and five Orthodox churches. In Helsinki itself, the Catholic community pays 12,000 euros ($14,000) monthly to use a larger, empty Lutheran church building.
“St. Henry’s Cathedral is too small,” Father Kabeza said. “We were saying eight Masses a day, and people were still standing outside.” In Finland’s harsh winters, he added, “as their pastor and father, I hated to see my children outside in the cold when they came to Mass.”
The bishop’s top priorities are building Finland’s first Catholic school and a diocesan pastoral center in Helsinki to coordinate catechesis and charity. No Catholic schools currently exist in the country.
Both clerics described Finland as highly secular despite 65 percent of citizens remaining nominally Lutheran. The Orthodox community accounts for about 0.3 percent, making Lutheranism, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism the three largest religious groups.
Yet necessity has bred unusually warm relations among the churches. Bishop Goyarrola called Finland “a paradise of ecumenism.” Last year nearly 400 Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans marched together in a Marian procession through Helsinki on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, complete with Catholic statues, Orthodox icons, and choirs from both traditions.
A 160-page joint declaration on Church ministry and the Eucharist signed in 2017 between Finland’s Catholic and Lutheran churches left the Vatican astonished, the bishop said.
The recent surge in Catholic practice, both men agreed, accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most denominations closed their doors, the Finnish government gave churches a “free hand,” and the Catholic Church kept its buildings open.
“We continued to say Masses, and our buildings were always physically open and people were coming in to pray,” Bishop Goyarrola recalled. Father Kabeza added that frightened residents “were looking for something,” and many discovered it in the open Catholic churches.
Young men in particular, Father Kabeza noted, are drawn to the Church’s sacraments and tradition, seeking “something that is very strong, something which is stable.”
Bishop Goyarrola, a native of Bilbao, Spain, who joined Opus Dei at age 18 and later trained as a surgeon before entering the priesthood, first arrived in Finland in 2006. He was consecrated bishop in 2023.
Father Kabeza’s own journey to Finland began after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, during which his father was shot in front of his mother and sisters. He spent six years in a refugee camp with his mother and five siblings before the family was resettled in Finland through a United Nations program for genocide survivors.
“Faith, forgiveness, and family are the basis of life,” he said.
Now the two priests are asking American Catholics to help support their far-northern flock.
Quoting a recent remark attributed to Pope Leo XIV, Bishop Goyarrola said, “Christians are brothers and sisters who need to support each other.” He asked the universal Church to aid “our Catholic family around the world” as he cares for his growing diocese in one of the world’s most secular and expensive countries.
“We have a lot of faith, happiness, and joy,” the bishop said with a laugh. “We have a lot of dreams, but we have no money.”
- Raju Hasmukh with files from CNA
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