Catholic Diocese of Helsinki


The Catholic Diocese of Helsinki is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Catholic church based in Helsinki, which comprises the whole of Finland. The diocese is divided into eight parishes.
Bishopry is vacant. As of 2018 there are 15,000 registered catholic people living in Finland and around 10,000 unregistered members are there in the country. More than 6000 Catholic families are there in the total country where 50 percentage is Finns and rest is International community.

Parishes

There is a high demand for starting a new parish at Northern Finland at Rovaniemi as it is the major tourist destination for Lapland and Santa Claus.

History

In 1550 the episcopate of the last Roman Catholic bishop of Åbo ended. Thereafter Lutheranism prevailed in Finland. The Reformation in the sixteenth century caused the loss of almost all of Northern Europe to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1582 the stray Catholics in Finland and elsewhere in Northern Europe were placed under the jurisdiction of a papal nuncio in Cologne. The Congregation de propaganda fide, on its establishment in 1622, took charge of the vast missionary field, which - at its third session - it divided among the nuncio of Brussels, the nuncio at Cologne and the nuncio to Poland.
In 1688 Finland became part of the Apostolic Vicariate of the Nordic Missions. In 1783 the Apostolic Vicariate of Sweden was created out of parts of the Nordic Missions comprising then Finland and Sweden. In 1809, when Finland came under Russian rule, the Roman Catholic jurisdiction passed on to the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Mohilev. In 1920 the Vatican established the Apostolic Vicariate of Finland which was upgraded to the Diocese of Helsinki in 1955.

Episcopal ordinaries

Apostolic Vicars of Finland

  1. Henri Buckx, SCI
  2. Willem Cobben, SCI

    Bishops of Helsinki

  3. Willem Cobben, SCI
  4. Paul Verschuren, SCI
  5. Józef Wróbel, SCI
  6. Teemu Sippo, SCI