Greenland: Catholicism's Modest Presence

"We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we will welcome you into the United States of America," Donald Trump told the inhabitants of the autonomous Danish territory a few days before the March 11, 2025, legislative elections, which were marked by a surge in support for the nationalist independence party.

He added: "We will protect you, we will make you rich, and together, we will take Greenland to heights you never thought possible before."

These promises, whatever their truth, have given pause to the Catholics of the immense Arctic island attached to the Kingdom of Denmark, where the Church occupies only a marginal place in a religious landscape dominated by Lutheranism. In a population of approximately 57,000, Catholics represent only a tiny minority, estimated at around 300 people in 2025, or 1% of the population.

The history of Catholicism in Greenland dates back to the Middle Ages, with the arrival of the Norwegian Vikings in the 10th century. In 1124, the Diocese of Garoar was established under the leadership of Pope Paschal II, with Bishop Erik Gnupsson as its first bishop. This diocese, the first in the New World, did not, however, survive the "Little Ice Age" that decimated European colonies around the 15th century.

Catholicism then disappeared from the island, supplanted in the 18th century by Lutheran Protestantism brought by Danish missionaries during the colonization process. It only reappeared in the 20th century, first with the American presence at the Pituffik military base, formerly Thule, in 1953, and then with the founding of Christ the King Parish in Nuuk in 1958, under the aegis of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the island's only parish. 

In the wake of the Americans, a Catholic foreign workforce has gathered, mainly from the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as from other regions of the Eurasian continent. They constitute the driving force of Catholicism in Greenland, a rapidly growing minority, considering that there were only about 60 faithful on the island in 2009.

As the religious news agency Fides reports, the spiritual care of these faithful is entrusted, in addition to the priests of the Diocese of Copenhagen, to the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, as well as to the military ordinariate of the United States of America. The U.S. also pays $300 million a year in rent to maintain the Thule base. This helps better explains the ambitions of the new tenant of the White House regarding this part of the Arctic.

But Catholics don't only live in Nuuk, the main urban center; they are also present in small villages scattered along the fjords or in the hinterland, where there are no places of worship.

Following the model of the first Christian communities, Mass is celebrated in homes, thanks to Danish priests who make a two-hour flight to reach this other group of parishioners, thus ensuring Sunday Mass for the faithful who, braving polar temperatures, have left their country to support their families.