Tuomas Nyyssola originally baptized a Lutheran on feast of St. Lucy
Tuomas Nyyssola, a seminarian studying for the Diocese of Helsinki, Finland, in Rome, tells his conversion story and discusses the history of the Catholic faith in Finland.
Father David Bellusci: Tell me about your background.
Tuomas Nyyssola: I was born Oct. 22, 1981, in Evijarvi, Finland, to a Lutheran father and a Pentecostal mother. Over 70 per cent of Finns belong to the Lutheran Church of Finland.
I was baptized in the Lutheran Church Dec. 13, the feast of St. Lucy. It is interesting that St. Lucy is one of the few saints honoured in Nordic countries, relics of our Catholic past.
After high school I spent a year doing voluntary youth work and another year studying the Bible in a Protestant Bible School before going to study theology at the University of Helsinki.
FDB: Why did you become a Catholic?
TN: During my studies I started to reflect on the history of the church. We have a narrow, if not false, picture of the Catholic Church in Finnish schools.
As I studied Church history for the first time I got to know figures like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Benedict, and grew to admire them. I was struck by the fact that all of them belonged to the Catholic Church, not the Lutheran one.
My vision of the Catholic Church was still blurred, so I rationalized that perhaps in their time the Catholic Church was not as corrupt as we are taught. But I started to realize that this might not be the whole truth.
I met a fellow student who had become a Catholic, the first Catholic I met in my life; Catholics in Finland after the Lutheran Reformation were reduced to about 0.2 per cent of the population.
I mentioned to him I was interested in the Catholic Church, and he invited me to Sunday Mass. That Mass, a couple of weeks later, was a decisive turning point. I realized very soon that this was something I had been looking for my whole life.
I soon realized I would become Catholic, but I didn’t mention this to anyone. There were some things I wanted to figure out before I could be ready to take that step.
FDB: So why the priesthood?
TN: It was when I was about to leave the Lutheran Church to become Catholic that the idea of the priesthood first came to my mind. I was in a Lutheran parish office signing formally my desire to leave that Church to become a Catholic. It just came, a warm and gentle thought that (now) I would become a Catholic priest.
My first reaction was that it would be wonderful, but that it would be impossible for me. But the idea never really left, and after two years or so I went to talk with our parish priest about it. There were many twists and turns in between, but now I’m a seminarian!
Ultimately, becoming a priest is about the Eucharist. I want to be able to celebrate Mass and bring Jesus to others through the Mass.
FDB: What happened to the Catholic Church in Finland?
TN: Catholicism came to Finland around the year 1000. For the next 500 years the Catholic Church and culture was slowly growing. New congregations like the Dominicans and the Franciscans arrived in the country; the Dominicans by 1249.
Considering the size of the population in the late Middle Ages, about 300,000 by the year 1550, the Catholic Church could be said to have been flourishing: over 100 stone churches had been built, and most of them are still there.
That comes to about one church for every 3,000 inhabitants! It’s not better than that in Rome today; it’s almost the same ratio!
All of that disappeared with Luther’s Reformation. The Catholic faith was forbidden for almost 400 hundred years. Can you believe that?
Since the beginning of the 20th century it has been slowly returning: Finnish law no longer forbids conversion to Catholicism, and the Church has a right to be present.
FDB: How do you feel about the canonization of the Bridgettine sister, now St. Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad?
TN: June 5, 2016, was a big day for Scandinavia! St. Elizabeth is, I think, the first Scandinavian canonized since the Reformation, indeed, since St. Bridget of Sweden, or Birgitta, as we say in Sweden and Finland.
The Reformation obstructed the canonization of our saintly Blessed Hemming, the Bishop of Turku, Finland, a friend of St. Bridget.
The Reformation was connected with the radical political reconstruction of the whole North: it stopped the advancement of the so called “Kalmar Union”: one state unifying Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
This union originated with the Catholic Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1387-1412), who was educated by one of the daughters of St. Bridget, who had children before being widowed.
It was a Catholic monarch under whom Scandinavia was united. The end of this union came when the Lutheran Reformer of Sweden-Finland, King Gustav Vasa (1496-1560), seized power as King of Sweden.
For the next approximately 400 years it was forbidden to practise the Catholic faith. This is often said to date from the so called Uppsala Synod of 1593, which declared that the state religion was Lutheran.
We are very happy after four centuries to have the Catholic faith back in Scandinavia!
FDB: One of my favourite Scandinavian figures is Queen Christina of Sweden. What do you think of her?
TN: Her picture, hanging on the wall of the Gregorian University in Rome, was a great comfort for me during my first year in Rome, when I was the only seminarian from Finland. I would also go to pray at her tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica.
I have to admit I don’t know her that well. I cannot say whether she should be considered a saint. But her determination to leave her country and give up her crown, if it was all “just” for the sake of becoming Catholic, is surely something saintly.
FDB: In 2017 we will reach the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Reformation, when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. What do you think of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue?
TN: I’m not a specialist, but I can point out there are many independent Lutheran churches, for example in Finland the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland,” and Sweden has its own Lutheran Church. There’s no Lutheran magisterium, but Luther is the master for many!
FDB: How do Lutherans deal with papal authority?
TN: The reformers quite violently resisted it. A slight exception was Philipp Melanchton, who might have accepted the Pope having a leading position in the Church for some practical reasons. Since the Reformation Lutherans have not recognized papal authority, usually because they don’t know much about the papacy and the teachings of the Church.
FDB: What is the Lutheran view of the Holy Eucharist?
TN: Lutherans stated in the Book of Concord that Jesus is “really present” in the Eucharist, but they don’t teach transubstantiation.
There has to be a sacramental priesthood to have the Real Presence, and Lutherans do not consider ordination a sacrament; they consider only baptism and Eucharist sacraments.
One thing that attracted me to the Catholic Church, which I might have not been able to state then, was precisely Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist. Lutherans do not have adoration. There are no tabernacles or processions of the Eucharist.
However Lutheran communion is usually received kneeling; they usually have altar rails, even today.
FDB: I don’t think Luther foresaw ordination of women, an obstacle to the union of our churches. What is the situation in Finland?
TN: In the Lutheran Church of Finland female ordination was accepted in 1986, after being brought to a vote the fourth time. Unfortunately, in the Lutheran Church, as in other Protestant denominations, if you are persistent enough, you will often get what you want; and then there is no going back.
If people are unhappy they break away and form another church. Today the Lutheran Bishop of Helsinki is a woman.
FDB: Another obstacle to ecumenism which Luther certainly could not have foreseen was same-sex unions/marriages. What is the policy in the Lutheran Church of Finland?
TN: Some argued in 1986 when female ordination became accepted that it would not be long before same-sex couples had marriages. In Finland on April 8, the president ratified a new law recognizing “same-sex marriages” which will come into effect in March 2017.
The Lutheran Church of Finland has close contacts with the state, so there’s lot of pressure for Lutherans officially to accept these “marriages.” The Lutheran Church hasn’t given its final word, but it allows “an informal prayer for same-sex couples.”
Mostly the message is positive for the homosexual lifestyle, I would say; reaction to those who consider it wrong is usually strong.
FDB: How is the Catholic Church in Finland doing today?
TN: The Catholic population is around 13.000 out of 5.5 million inhabitants. We have eight parishes, eight churches, and some religious congregations. There’s no real diocesan seminary. There are two native Finnish priests working in Finland; one is a Dominican friar and one is the bishop!
One can quite easily pass one’s whole life without encountering the Catholic Church. Most people know almost nothing about Catholicism; most do not know a single Catholic.
They have started showing the Pope’s Christmas midnight Mass on the national television channel; I think it’s quite popular. In 2009 we got our first Finnish-born bishop since 1510, since the Reformation! We are very happy about this.
FDB: What do you hope to bring to the Catholic Church in Finland?
TN: I’m just a single seminarian at the moment. God willing, I will be ordained to serve the Church in Finland. A Finnish-speaking priest would be valuable. I hope to explain what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, and to defend these teachings.
Wasn’t it the desire of the reformers that each “should hear the Gospel being proclaimed in their own language”? That’s what we should do, but the real Gospel is the Catholic one!
Catholicism is the source of Finland’s baptism, so to say, and Christian history. I think there are many people waiting to hear the good news.
