“With the law on religious liberty that came into force last year, a new era has begun for the Catholic Church in Finland”, says Bishop Josef Wrobel of Helsinki, interviewed by SIR following the European elections. “Not only is there full legal recognition of religious liberty explains Wrobel -, but the esteem and consideration in which the Catholic Church is held in the institutions and in public opinion have grown. Today, for example, it is possible to conduct catechesis in schools and we are no longer the butt of criticisms and attacks”. “But the fact remains he adds that we are a poor Church, that does not receive any of the proceeds of the church taxes as do the Lutheran and Orthodox Churches, both recognized as state churches”. Msgr. Wrobel points out that the Catholic Church is now participating in public debates and that the moral authority of the Pope is growing”. But in Finnish society in general, he stresses, “the great liberalism, from an ethical point of view, is expressed both in the field of sexual and matrimonial ethics, with the introduction of homosexual unions, and in the bioethical and biomedical field, e.g. with the introduction of therapeutic cloning”.
