 ‘I’ve never seen so many female priests together in one place before in my life!’ commented one senior male pastor at Sunday’s celebrations for women priests in the Oulu Diocese.
Hosted by the Bishop of Oulu and his wife at Oulu’s ‘Bishop’s Palace’, the party was thrown to mark twenty years since Finland first ordained female clergy. It was packed with women priests –and their husbands – from all around the Diocese which stretches from Lapland down to Kokkola.
According to one female priest, Oulu is the only diocese to have such a celebration. ‘It’s because Oulu is the diocese in which women pastors still experience discrimination,’ she told me. ‘There are still priests here who refuse to work with their female colleagues . . . so maybe that’s one reason for celebrating the twentieth anniversary here.’ Discrimination Oulu has hit the national newspapers with the case of Rev’d Vesa Pöyhtäri who has consistently refused to work with his colleague Rev’d Satu Saarinen, herself at the party, because she is woman.She published a book in 2005 “My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light” which provided evidence that female clergy were routinely discriminated against in the diocese. This book – based on her doctoral thesis – attracted so much attention that the US State Department commented on it in a report into religious freedom in Finland in 2006.The bishop, the Rt. Rev’d Samuel Salmi, gave an entertaining speech in which he said that only ten years ago he wouldn’t have thought it was possible to have a celebration like this. His predecessor as bishop, Rt Rev’d Olavi Rimpeläinen, was so opposed to women priests that, if they got a job in Oulu, he refused to ordain them so that they had to get ordained elsewhere. Opponents claim that the Bible makes clear that women should not be priests. Dr. Salmi also remembered that when they had the first ordinations of female clergy in Turku twenty years ago, there were some people that were so fiercely opposed that there had to be police positioned around the cathedral for the safety of the new female priests. ‘But we don’t need that any more!’ he said. ‘Almost all women!’ In addition to the bishop’s speech, there was piano music and hymn singing and a buffet luncheon with non-alcoholic drinks such as ‘home made beer’. Another female priest, in her twenties, thought that the party was ‘great’ because ‘there are so many of us women pastors here! When I was ordained it was almost all men and just a few women but here it is all almost all women!’ The event attracted various dignitaries such as the Oulu’s Archdeacon, a senior Theology Professor from Helsinki University and various other senior clergy such as congregation leaders from the diocese and city itself. Earlier in the day there had been a mass in Oulu Cathedral for the women priests, which was reported in the Kaleva, where there was a sermon by one of the first women priests to be ordained in Finland.
Around fifty percent of people ordained as priests in Finland are now women according to recent statistics. However, Oulu has the lowest percentage of female priests in the country and includes one congregation where there are no women priests at all.
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