Territory All Finland Denomination Roman Catholic Area 338,424 km² Cathedral St. Henry's Cathedral | Parishes 8 Rite Latin Rite Country Finland Secular priests 20 | |
 | ||
Metropolitan Immediately subject to the Holy See Population
- Total
- Catholics (as of 2013)
5,401,267
12,434 ( 0.2%) | ||
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helsinki is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic church based in Helsinki, which comprises the whole of Finland. The diocese is divided into eight parishes, including Oulu which covers almost all of the northern part of Finland.
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The current Roman Catholic Bishop of Helsinki is Teemu Sippo, S.C.I., the first ethnic Finn to hold the office since its reestablishment after the Reformation (previous bishops included three Dutch and a Pole).
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 (for the Catholics in Denmark and Norway), the nuncio at Cologne (much of Northern Germany) and the nuncio to Poland (Finland, Mecklenburg, and Sweden).
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 (then seated in St. Petersburg). In 1920 the Vatican established the Apostolic Vicariate of Finland which was upgraded to the Diocese of Helsinki in 1955.
Apostolic Vicars of Finland
- Henri Buckx, SCI (1923–1933)
- Willem Cobben, SCI (1933–1955)
Bishops of Helsinki
- Willem Cobben, SCI (1955–1967)
- Paul Verschuren, SCI (1967–1998)
- Józef Wróbel, SCI (2001–2008)
- Teemu Sippo, SCI (2009– )