By ALBERTO CAROSA
In his homily at Santa Marta on June 26, Pope Francis called upon faithful to be open to “God’s surprises,” and certainly he knew what he was talking about, if we think at the “surprise” appointment of the first Scandinavian cardinal in the history of the Church.
The bishop of Stockholm, Carmelite Anders Arborelius, an ethnic Swede who could not have been a more ideal representative of what Pope Francis uses to term the “Church of the Peripheries,” received his red hat in the consistory on Wednesday, June 28, in Rome, the eve of the solemn feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul.
The Church in Sweden has been in the news on a number of occasions recently.
One occasion was June 2016 canonization of Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad, the Bridgettine nun who revived and brought the order back to Sweden in the 19th century after it was suppressed following the Reformation.
And another occasion was when Francis visited Sweden for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation: He then would have had a chance to see firsthand the work and the character of Arborelius.
In a commentary in Crux (June 26, 2017), Catholic analyst John L. Allen Jr. speaks also of the “personal factor when it comes to Popes picking cardinals.” But in his opinion, “Francis was charmed and impressed by Bishop Anders Aborelius” during his brief visit in 2016.
According to those who know Arborelius, he continued, he’s easy to like.
“The bishop of Stockholm is a very good man, very competent and open, he gets on with everybody,” Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of nearby Denmark, a fellow member of the Scandinavian Bishops Conference, was quoted as saying in a June 15 interview with Crux: “He’ll be a very good representative for the church here.”
This judgment largely coincides with that of a religious congregation which has members who know the new cardinal well: the above-mentioned Bridgettine order, which was originally founded by St. Bridget (or Birgitta) of Sweden in 1344. Cardinal Arborelius was born in Canton Ticino in Switzerland of Swedish parents who were living there and he had the chance to soon be in close contact with the local Bridgettine nuns, based in a convent in Lugano.
Asked about their opinion about his election, both the former general abbess Mother Tekla Famiglietti and her successor, Mother Fabia Kattakayam, agree that what was said by their congregation when he was appointed bishop of Stockholm by John Paul II on November 17, 1998 applies also to the present situation. He is a man of sound doctrine, solid faith, and profound spirituality, destined to bring immense good to the local and universal Church, and also to his own country.
Olle Brandt, a professor of archaeology at the papal institute for Christian archaeology in Rome as well a member of the editorial staff of Swedish Jesuit journal Signum, heard the news from Rome while he was in Sweden. He had just attended the 11:00 Mass in the Catholic parish of Uppsala. He was about to have lunch with the Signum editor and L’Osservatore Romano editorialist, Swedish Jesuit Ulf Jonsson, who informed those present about the news. Applause greeted the announcement.
He immediately phoned his contacts with Swedish radio, and they were both involved in a live radio program. “I was stunned that the state radio in Sweden has stopped everything for a live broadcast for over an hour,” Professor Brandt said.
“Journalists asked me many times when Anders Arborelius would have to move to Rome, but none of them seemed to figure out that on the contrary Pope Francis appointed cardinals in peripheral churches for them to remain there.”
Thus now, he concluded, “the effect is that the Swedish public know that the Pope looks at Sweden. The new cardinal has received a lot of media attention and in this sense maybe now Rome comes little closer to Sweden or at least it can be seen better from Sweden.”
This media attention was confirmed by the fact that a leading Catholic Swedish historian, Yvonne Maria Werner, was interviewed by the state radio. She is attached to the department of history at the University of Lund. She specializes in Nordic Catholic cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
“This is a great event with some 500 Swedish Catholics who went to Rome for the ceremonies,” she said. “As a cardinal, Bishop Anders will take part in the election of the next Pope, and his elevation is of great importance for the status of the Catholic Church here in Scandinavia. But apart from that, it will bring no changes.”
Dean Johnny Hagberg of the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, elaborated a bit on the fact that as a cardinal he will be able to participate in the election of a next Pope. “Who knows from what country that Pope will come?” he wondered. “Maybe from the Nordic parts of Europe? Even if the thought could appear unrealistic, this possibility could not be ruled out altogether.”
Everybody was very surprised at the announcement that Bishop Anders Arborelius of Sweden was appointed cardinal, Hagberg went on.
In a TV interview the same evening, the newly appointed cardinal himself pointed out that “this came like lightning from a clear sky. When I was elected bishop they gave me some time to reflect. When receiving the title of cardinal, this seems not to be the rule, but one is expected to accept the task for which one has been chosen.”
For Swedish Catholics especially, but also for the Swedish Christian community in general, this is a big event, Dean Hagberg remarked. Through this appointment Sweden and Scandinavia are taken up in a wider context of the worldwide Church, since never before has anyone of the Nordic countries received the rank of a cardinal.
“There is no doubt that Bishop Anders Arborelius is someone very well suited to the task,” Hagberg went on.
Dean Hagberg is also a scholar and his great love and passion are books on literature and history, especially those focused on the history of the Church before the Reformation. As chairman of the Historical Society of Skara Diocese, he has sponsored, authored, and published an amazing number of these books.
The Diocese of Skara is the oldest diocese in Sweden and reflects the Catholic history of Sweden from its very beginning. Many of these books record much about Catholic history in Sweden and about Catholic personalities, and the dean and his society would like to rescue these books from their oblivion.
His mammoth work did not go unnoticed and in the apostolic nunciature in Stockholm on February 15, 2009, the then Vatican nuncio to Scandinavia, Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, awarded him the Order of St. Gregory the Great on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI, with the following statement: “For your great merits for the promotion of ecumenical dialogue, for your outstanding efforts through your research and activities in struggling against the loss of historical memory, and for reminding the present generation of our common past as a source of new hope for the future.”
“The Order is given to men and women who have distinguished themselves through their efforts in favor of Christian or civil society, or for merits they have acquired through their collaboration with the Catholic Church,” Archbishop Tscherrig recalled in his address on the occasion.
“Both distinctions fully apply to Rev. Dean Johnny Hagberg….He wholeheartedly participates in what John Paul II called ‘spiritual ecumenism,” which fosters ecumenism through renewal and prayer.”
And prayer is precisely the final note of Dean Hagberg’s comment on the appointment of the first cardinal from Sweden:
“Bishop Arborelius has received many congratulations in connection with his appointment and that is quite natural,” he concluded. “But he also needs us to pray for him, since as a cardinal he will have to bear heavy responsibilities on his shoulders.”
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