Orthodox Church of Finland

History of the Orthodox Church in Finland

History The Orthodox faith can be considered the earliest form of Christianity to arrive in Finland. It spread to southern Finland and to the people of Karelia around Lake Ladoga through trade and other contacts with the East over 1,000 years ago. The founding of monasteries on the islands of Lake Ladoga contributed significantly to the spreading and establishment of the Orthodox faith in eastern Finland. The monasteries were important missionary centres.

Chief among these monasteries was Valamo, traditionally held to have been founded by a Greek-born monk named Serge and his younger assistant Herman. Another important monastery was Konevitsa, founded by Arseni, another Greek monk, in the late 14th century. It was through the missionary zeal of the monasteries of Lake Ladoga that the Orthodox Church gained a foothold in eastern Finland and Karelia. Churches were built in villages, and several tiny wilderness monasteries were founded literally in the middle of nowhere. In the 16th century, the Orthodox Church in Karelia reached the Arctic Ocean with the founding of the Petsamo monastery.

The western parts of Karelia were taken over by Sweden in the wars between Sweden and Russia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The puritan Lutheran Church of Sweden brought pressure to bear on the Orthodox population living near the eastern border, and many Orthodox Karelians moved to central Russia around this time. Russia regained full control of Lake Ladoga in the early 18th century, and in 1809 the whole of Finland became part of the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy. This marked the beginning of a period of vigorous growth for the monasteries of Lake Ladoga.

Administratively, the Orthodox Church in Finland at first came under the Archbishop of Novgorod, but when Finland was annexed by Russia, the land was joined to the Diocese of St Petersburg. In the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, the Church of Russia began to invest in education for Orthodox populations in border regions and remote areas. The Holy Synod decreed that services in Finnish parishes should be conducted in Finnish and that priests assigned to Finnish parishes had to know Finnish. The founding of the Diocese of Viipuri in 1892 was a major advance for the Orthodox Church of Finland.

With the Russian Revolution of 1917, Finland became independent, and administrative ties with the Church of Russia were severed. The Orthodox Church of Finland had to be reorganized. The government appointed a committee to deliberate the position of the Church, and the committee submitted a proposal which the Senate enacted as the Decree on the Orthodox Church of Finland in 1918. This Decree raised the Orthodox Church and put it on a par with the Lutheran Church as the second national church. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, confirmed the autonomy of the Orthodox Church of Finland in 1921. Two years later, in 1923, a tomos decree transferred the Orthodox Church of Finland to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and gave the Church a high degree of independence in internal matters. On gaining autonomous status, the Church determined that its services and official business were to be conducted in Finnish. The seat of the Archbishop was moved from Viipuri to Sortavala.

The Second World War turned the Orthodox Church of Finland into a church of evacuees. After the Winter War, Finland was obliged to cede Sortavala and all of Ladoga Karelia to the Soviet Union. The Church lost 90 per cent of its property, and 70 per cent of its members had to be evacuated from their homes. The Orthodox population became dispersed throughout Finland. The monasteries of Karelia were also evacuated and re-founded at new locations.

Under Archbishop Paavali and his successor Archbishop Johannes, the Church forged international links in the Orthodox world. The Church has established itself as a part of Finnish society and its spiritual culture. In 2001, Metropolitan Leo was elected Archbishop of Karelia and All Finland, continuing along the paths laid out by his predecessors.

Eastern Orthodox Christianity was officially introduced to Finland during Russian rule in the 19th century. In Helsinki, Viipuri and Karelian Isthmus, Orthodoxy was associated with the country's ruling elite, however many rural Finns, Saami and Karelians where also members of the Orthodox Church.

Shortly after Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917, the Finnish Orthodox Church declared its autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1923, the Finnish Church completly separated from the Russian Church, becoming an autonomous part of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. The Gregorian Calendar was also adopted. Other reforms introduced after independence include changing the language of high mass from Church Slavonic to Finnish and the transfer of the Archepiscopal seat from the Karelian and Russian speaking city of Viipuri to the Finnish speaking city of Sortavala.

Until World War II, majority of the Orthodox Christian in Finland were in Karelia. As a consequence of the war, many residents of that border province evacuated to other parts of the country. The monastery of Valamo was evacuated in 1940 and the monastery of New Valamo was founded in 1941 at Heinävesi. Later, the monks from Konevitsa and Petsamo monasteries also joined the New Valamo monastery. The nunnery of Lintula at Kivenapa (Karelian Isthmus) was also evacuated, and re-established at Heinävesi in 1946. A new parish network was established, and many new churches were built in the 1950s. After the city of Viipuri was lost to the Soviet Union, its Diocesan seat was moved to Helsinki. A third Diocese was established at Oulu in 1979.

To this day, Orthodoxy is practiced mostly by Russians, Karelians and the Sami (Koltta Tribe), although it has shed the image of the priviledged class it was once associated with. The Orthodox Christian Church has about 60.000 members.