Catholic Schools' Very Existence Threatened in Sweden

The most important of these schools is Notre Dame in Gothenburg, founded in 1873 by the Sisters of St. Joseph from France, and in which 400 children are currently enrolled.

One of the government’s major parties, the Democratic Party of Sweden, has since the fall of 2017 taken up the cause to close confessional schools, on the pretext that these establishments are “hindering the integration” of the many migrants on Swedish soil. The reader will have no trouble guessing to what culture and religion these immigrants, so difficult to integrate, belong.

In March 2018, the controversy heightened when the director of the leading power declared that “all religion should be removed from the public place,” promising to secularize confessional schools in the future.

Around the same time, the Minister for Public Administration, Ardalan Shekarabi – a native of Iran – declared that the separation of the sexes in some private Swedish schools amounted to “fascism” and the “violation of basic human rights.”

The cardinal-archbishop of Stockholm, Cardinal Anders Arborelius, has expressed his worry at what he called “an aggressive assault against our Catholic community.” But he seeks to reassure:

Previous attempts to make the life for our school more difficult by stopping financial support to the Catholic school and to some of the independent schools have fortunately failed.” But he does consider this the worst secularist attack on our culture and Faith in many decades. It is both disheartening and troubling.

In Sweden, there are 200,000 Catholics, 35% of whom are under the age of 25. Every Sunday, Mass is celebrated in 26 languages and nine different rites throughout the country. 44 parishes, some of which cover as large a surface as Belgium or Switzerland, cover the 278,023-square-mile territory with its population of a little under ten million.

The FSSPX priests from the district of England provide the apostolate of Tradition in Sweden, mainly in Malmö and Stockholm.