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Bishop celebrates centenary of first Catholic Mass in Svalbard, Norway
Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim and Apostolic Administrator of Tromsø celebrated a solemn Mass in Longyearbyen on Sunday, 30 August, to mark 100 years since the first Catholic Mass was celebrated in Svalbard, Norway. In his homily, Bishop Varden reflects on vulnerability and loneliness, calling Christians to rediscover a sound sense of reality and to bring Christ’s reconciliation, healing and friendship to those who are isolated and afraid.
By Charlotta Smeds
A century after a Catholic bishop first celebrated Mass in Svalbard, Norway, the faithful gathered in Longyearbyen to give thanks for these 100 years of Catholic presence and pastoral care in one of the world’s northernmost inhabited regions.
Bishop Erik Varden presided over the celebration in Svalbard Church. Among those accompanying him were Fr. Andrzej Kosciukiewicz, parish priest of Our Lady’s Church in Tromsø, Fr. Rafal Ockojski, local delegate of the Territorial Prelature of Tromsø, and representatives of Caritas and the Catholic community in Tromsø.
Representatives of the Lutheran Church of Norway also participated, giving the celebration a strongly ecumenical character.
Svalbard and human vulnerability
In his homily, Bishop Varden drew on Svalbard’s stark landscape and history to reflect on the Christian understanding of human vulnerability.
He recalled how different arriving in Svalbard would have been a century ago, after an arduous journey by sea, knowing that some 900 kilometres (around 560 miles) of icy water separated the archipelago from mainland Norway.
Today, he noted with humour, visitors arrive comfortably by plane and have 5G on their phones.
“Everything that distracts us elsewhere follows us here,” he said.
The Bishop recalled an account by Norwegian explorer and former Governor of Svalbard, Helge Ingstad, who in the 1930s visited a hunter who had spent a long period isolated in the Arctic wilderness.
The man was physically well but had been deeply affected by his isolation. When other people finally appeared, Ingstad wrote, their presence awakened in him “something of a troubled joy.”
For Bishop Varden, the story illustrated something fundamental about the human condition.
“Are we not all, to a large extent, set up for a life of loneliness, resigned to the darkness and storm outside the door, which we keep closed?” he asked. “And yet do we not long for someone to come and knock?”
The Svalbard Islands
‘What we need is a sound sense of reality’
Bishop Varden compared the Arctic wilderness with the desert sought out by the first Christian monks. They withdrew into solitude not because they despised humanity, he said, but in order to free themselves from illusions and encounter themselves truthfully before God.
“To encounter oneself means to stand face to face with one’s own vulnerability.”
Modern society, he continued, has often tried to eliminate vulnerability through a belief in technological progress and human control. Yet humanity now lives with a new degree of uncertainty.
“What we need is not more virtual fantasy; what we need is a sound sense of reality,” he emphasized.
Svalbard itself can teach this realism, he added, pointing to the changing environment and melting ice.
“If we turn off the iPhone, Svalbard teaches us much that is essential.”
The immense Arctic landscape also reminds humanity of its smallness before creation and God, he underlined.
“If we have eyes that see, we realise how small we are, both in time and space. If we have ears that hear, this insight has an echo of eternity.”
Responsible for one another
Turning to the Sunday readings, Bishop Varden recalled St Paul’s words: “Do not conform yourselves to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
He also reflected on Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in the Gospel after the Apostle resisted Christ’s announcement of His Passion.
The mentality of the world, Bishop Varden said, tells people that they are ultimately left to themselves and that the strongest will prevail.
“God’s mind, on the other hand, and the path He asks us to walk, holds us responsible for one another,” he highlighted.
Christians were therefore called to reach people who have become isolated through fear, suffering or loneliness.
“We do so by pouring out our lives, by bringing the message of reconciliation, healing and possible friendship to lonely, entrenched, anxious people,” the Bishop said.
Such a mission, he added, can often be accomplished as effectively through actions as through words.
A street sign in Svalbard
A century since Bishop Smit’s first Mass
It was in order to bring the Eucharist to Catholics in the Arctic that Bishop Johannes Olav Smit travelled to Svalbard in 1926.
“For the sake of bringing Jesus’ sacrifice concretely to Svalbard, Bishop Smit came here in 1926 and celebrated the first Catholic Mass on the archipelago,” Bishop Varden said.
The first Mass was celebrated in Longyearbyen on 4 August 1926. Bishop Smit had been encouraged by Cardinal Willem van Rossum in Rome to travel to Spitsbergen to discover where Catholics were living.
He found no local Catholics in Longyearbyen or Ny-Ålesund, but in Barentsburg he encountered Dutch Catholics working in the mining community of the Nederlandsche Spitsbergen Compagnie. They had written to the Pope asking for pastoral care.
On 8 August, Bishop Smit celebrated a Pontifical Mass in Barentsburg and administered Confirmation.
Although a permanent Catholic mission was never established, regular Catholic Masses in Longyearbyen became possible again from 1986. Priests from Tromsø have also travelled to the Polish research station in Hornsund to celebrate Mass for Catholics there.
Ecumenical friendship in the High Arctic
There is no Catholic church building in Svalbard. Catholic worship has therefore been made possible through the hospitality of the Church of Norway and local authorities. The centenary Eucharist was consequently also an act of thanksgiving for an ecumenical friendship with deep roots.
The Catholic history of Svalbard extends even further back. In 1913, Pope St Pius X decided that the archipelago should belong ecclesiastically to the territory of the Catholic Church in Norway.
Svalbard was later placed under Norwegian sovereignty through the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, with the Svalbard Act entering into force in 1925.
‘We are called to knock on the door’
Bishop Varden concluded his homily by looking not only to the past but to the Christian mission of the future.
“In gratitude for the grace God has poured out on Svalbard through a hundred years, we will faithfully take responsibility for that grace,” he said.
Christians, he added, must remain rooted in reality, resist illusions and refuse to be overcome by fear.
Returning to the image of the isolated Arctic hunter, Bishop Varden concluded:
“We are called to knock on the door of every frozen hut, whether it stands out on the wilderness or wherever we ourselves belong.”
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