The wordwide debate over priestly celibacy has put the Catholic Church in the spotlight as Finland's Catholic Bishop defends the tradition. 65DN spoke to Oulu's Catholic Priest, an expat who arrived in Finland by lottery.
For most people, a lottery is a way of winning a bit of money. You choose numbers, a series of them are drawn out of a hat and hopefully some of them are yours. For Oulu's Catholic priest, Fr Krystian Kalinowski, a lottery decided his future.
'In 2002 there was a lottery,' he explains, 'and that is how it was decided that I would be sent to Finland.'
'But there was no Catholic seminary in Finland so we that were chosen to go to Finland . . . we were seminary!' he laughs.
'Against Every Human Being'
Lotteries? Nowhere to train? The whole thing seems pretty odd so the priest, originally from Gliwice in Poland, takes me back even further. Up until 1999, Fr Kalinowski, who is 31 this year, wasn't a religious man at all.
'I was against everything,' he recalls. 'I was against society, I was against every human being, I was against the church.'
'But then I realised that I could not go on by myself, doing what I like, thinking that nobody was important. I realised I was unhappy.'
Krystian was invited to a church meeting of the 'Neocatecumenal Way' - a revival group within the Catholic Church.
'We celebrated together, we shared our lives and our lives started to change. And it was in 2000 that I started to feel the vocation to become a priest.'
Inspired by the Pope
To 'test if it (his vocation) was true', Krystian went on a pilgrimage to Rome that year.
'There were many miracles all around!' he insists, with the striking calmness that he seems to exude. He even heard the then Pope, fellow-Pole John-Paul II, preach. What the Pope said calmed his doubts about being ordained: ''There is no happiness like the happiness that God can give you. If you are not sure, you can take a risk. Don't be afraid. You won't lose anything when you take a risk with God.”
The 'taking risks' part especially inspired Krystian. He decided that 'rather than be a priest in my diocese' he would be a priest 'anywhere in the world . . . without any prejuduce.' For Krystian, the randomness of the lottery, which took place in Italy, was 'God's will, because it wasn't my will or anybody else's.' He did, however, have the choice to decline going to somewhere the lottery chose if he wished. The trainee priests chosen for Finland trained in Switzerland before leaving for the north in 2005 where they established a seminary in Vantaa and then Espoo. Krystian was ordained a priest in November 2009.
A Foreign Parish
Now he is temporarily in charge of the parish, which stretches from central Ostrobothnia to the top of Lapland, because the Filipino head priest has had to go back to Australia to renew his VISA.
'The Parish of the Holy Family of Nazareth', based in Koskela, was established in 1986 after the Pope sent so-called 'mission families' to 'bring light' to these places. He sent an Italian family to Oulu and, by the early 1990s, their 'church' had grown to include Catholic Iraqi and Vietnamese refugees. They wrote to the Pope and he helped organise for them to have a proper church built.
Mass on Sunday, in the brightly painted church, has between 100 and 150 attendees. 'There are Iraqis, Vietnamese, Polish, Italian, sometimes a few Africans and many Spanish international students.'
Who Gets Saved?
But why does Finland need a Catholic 'mission'? It has Lutheran and Orthodox churches with which Krystian co-operates. Can you be saved from Hell if you're not a Catholic?!
'No,' replies Krystian, before adding, 'That's only a joke!' As far as Krystian is concerned anybody can go to Heaven – Muslims, Hindus, anybody – as long as they accept the love of God. But he is clear on what Hell means. 'If you do whatever you want and don't care about nobody else. You want to do something in your career, you do it! You want to have a relationship with somebody, you do it! You don't want to do something, you don't do it! You are the centre of the world! It's all about you!'
For Krystian, this is the 'worldly' way of thinking and it is this – not celibacy – which has led to problems of child-abuse in the Catholic church. 'Celibacy is a gift from God,' exclaims Krystian, who'd had girlfriends before becoming a priest.
'The Bible says it's best to be celibate,' he adds. 'It's not this that's caused paedophile problems. These paedophile priests are not faithful. They have lost their intimate relationship with God. Paedophilia did not used to be so common. It is something in society now and priests are part of society so they reflect their times.'
Female priests are also part of the times, at least in the Finnish Lutheran Church, but Krystian is having none of that, 'She is not a priest!' he laughs, in reference to one of them. 'She is a woman and a wife! A woman priest is a contradiction in terms. Okay, maybe in Finnish you can call them “naispappi” but there is no translation for this!'
As he shows me round his church, Krystian begins to ask the questions, 'Have you thought about your own salvation?' he enquires. 'Why do you walk with a limp? It is blessing from God so you can experience part of Christ's suffering on the cross.'
As I leave his church to walk out into – 20, he has one final thing to say: 'Goodbye. Remember, God loves you . . .'
Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article.
