Roman Catholicism in Norway

Roman Catholic Church in Norway
Saint Paul Catholic Church, Bergen.
Classification	Catholic Church
Geographical areas	Norway
Origin	934 A.D.
Members	229,652

Roman Catholicism in Norway is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, the Curia in Rome and the Scandinavian Bishops Conference.

There are, by November 2011, about 98,000 registered Catholics in Norway. But there are also lots of Catholics who aren't registered with their personal identification number; the real number is probably about 230,000 Catholics, 70% of whom were born abroad.
Annuario Pontificio 2011 uses a number of 229,652 Catholics. That constitutes about 5% of the population, making Norway the most Catholic country in Northern Europe.

Structure

The country is divided into three Church districts – the Diocese of Oslo and the prelatures of Trondheim and Tromsø, and these three consist of 35 parishes. At least two more are about to come, a third one in the city of Oslo (St. Martin) and one in Valdres (St. Thomas, by now a chapel district), both of them in the diocese of Oslo. The Catholic Church is about to become the second biggest religious community in Norway by amount of registered members - and with the unofficial number of 230 000, they already are.

Four religious orders have returned to Norway: the Cistercians, Dominicans, the Poor Clares, and the Trappistines. In 2009, monks from the Abbey of Citeaux dedicated a new monastery in Norway, naming it Munkeby Mariakloster. Trappistine nuns, likewise, bought land near the ruins of a pre-Reformation monastery on the island of Tautra in the Trondheim Fjord, moved to the site and built a new cloister, workplace, guesthouse and chapel, calling the new monastery, Tautra Mariakloster. In addition to these four, 17 other orders are also working in the country, for instance the St. Francis Xavier sisters, which is a unique order as it is founded in Norway. The Bishop of Oslo participates in the Scandinavian Bishops Conference.

There used to be several Catholic hospitals and schools around the country. There was also a Catholic orphanage in Oslo. Between 1967 and 1989, the Socialist government in Norway bought most of the Catholic (and other private) hospitals by force. The rest was condemned. Almost all of the schools were closed because of few pupils, and only the schools in Oslo, Arendal and Bergen survived.

Nowadays, the Catholic welfare institutions in Norway are pretty few. There are no Catholic hospitals or orphanages remaining, but the amount of Catholic schools are, on the other hand, quickly increasing. In addition to the three schools mentioned above, a new elementary school has opened in Bodø. There's also a Catholic high school in Bergen opening in the automn of 2012, and an elementary school is planned to be finished in Drammen within few years.

Besides, there's a hospice service run by Franciscans, and Caritas has an own office in Oslo.

Origin

The Catholic Church in Norway is as old as the kingdom itself, dating from approximately 900 A.D., with the first Christian monarchs, Haakon I from 934.

The country is considered to have officially converted upon the death of the king St. Olav at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030.

The subsequent Christianisation took several hundred years. Largely the work of Anglo-Saxon missionaries, the Norwegian Church has been considered the only daughter of English Catholicism. Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear, later Pope Adrian IV, established a church province in 1152, the archdiocese of Nidaros (Trondheim). The prosperous years of the High Middle Ages were followed by decline for Church and nation alike, although Norwegian Catholicism retained much of its vitality.

Reformation

The Lutheran Reformation lasted from 1526 to 1536. Catholic Church property and Catholic priests' personal properties were confiscated by the Crown. Catholic priests were exiled and imprisoned unless they submitted to conversion to the Danish king's faith. Bishop Jon Arason of Holar, executed in 1550, was the last Catholic bishop of Iceland (until the establishment of the Diocese of Reykjavik in 1923). The Bishop of Hamar from 1513 to 1537, Mogens Lauritsson, was imprisoned until his death in 1542.^{[citation needed]}

Many traditions from the Catholic Middle Ages continued for centuries more. In the late 18th century and into the 19th century, a strict and puritan interpretation of the Lutheran faith, inspired by the preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge, spread through Norway, and popular religious practices turned more purely Lutheran.

The Catholic Church per se, however, was not allowed to operate in Norway between 1537 and 1843, and throughout most of this period, Catholic priests faced execution. In the late 16th century, a few incidents of crypto-Catholicism occurred within the Church of Norway. The Roman Catholic faith survived in remote parts of the Kingdom until approximately 1800. Christiania (Oslo) had an illegal but tolerated Catholic congregation in the 1790s. In 1843 the Norwegian Parliament passed a religious tolerance act providing for limited religious freedom and allowing for legal non-Lutheran public religious services for the first time since the Reformation.

Legalization

The first parish after the Reformation was established in the capital in 1843; a few years later Catholic places of worship were opened in Alta (Finnmark), Tromsø and Bergen. In 1897, the constitutional ban on religious orders was lifted, which in time led to the establishment of several communities and monasteries.

In 1956, the final constitutional restriction on Catholics was lifted when Jesuits were allowed to enter the country for the first time since the Reformation, though it is known that at least one Jesuit - Xavier Rénom de la Baume - was killed in action with French Alpine forces during the Battles of Narvik.

Religious sisters working in hospitals and schools did much to overcome popular suspicions about Catholics. Sigrid Undset, a Catholic convert, and the Rev. Hallvard Rieber-Mohn, O.P., also contributed to this. Protestants and Catholics were brought closer together in firm opposition to the Quisling regime during the German occupation (1940–1945).

Catholic immigrants

The Catholic Church remained very much a minority church of a few thousand people right up to the decades following World War II. Around the country, the local congregations consisted of a few families each. However, with increased immigration from the 1960s onwards, the Catholic Church grew quickly.

At first, the immigrants came from Germany, The Netherlands, and France. Immigration from Chile, the Philippines, and from a wide range of other countries began in the 1970s. This development has further increased in the last few years with economic immigrants from Poland and Lithuania. The official number of Catholics, however, decreased slightly in 2004.^{[citation needed]} This is because the Norwegian state demands a person's social security number (fødsels-og personnummer) in order to grant the per capita subsidy. Ethnic Norwegian Catholics are now greatly outnumbered by the immigrants, although the former tend to be far more observant and conservative, being a self-selected group largely of ex-Lutheran converts. (On the other hand, Chileans, for example, who were mostly Marxist or secular humanist refugees who fled Pinochet's regime, tend to identify as Catholic solely when asked their religion, but few actually practice.) Catholic Church statistics from 2004 <http://www.katolsk.no/norge/n2004.htm> indicate that roughly 40% of Catholics (just under 20,000) are Norwegian-born (although a large fraction of these are undoubtedly of immigrant background), with the largest foreign groups being Filipinos, Vietnamese, Poles, Chileans, and Sri Lankans.

Year	Members	Percent
1971	9,366	0.24%
1980	13,923	0.34%
1990	26,580	0.62%
2000	42,598	0.98%
2010	66,972	1.37%
2011	98,000	1.98%

Municipality	Catholics (2003)	Percent	Catholics (2004)	Percent
Oslo	14,908	2.8%	13,300	2.5%
Bergen	3,873	1.6%	4,044	1.7%
Bærum	1,816	1.7%	1,666	1.6%
Stavanger	1,720	1.5%	1,568	1.3%
Trondheim	1,434	0.9%	1,416	0.9%
Kristiansand	1,251	1.6%	1,150	1.5%

References

• Catholic Church in Norway's website
• Kjelstrup, Karl (in Norwegian). Norvegia catholica : moderkirkens gjenreisning i Norge : et tilbakeblikk i anledning av 100-årsminnet for opprettelsen av St. Olavs menighet i Oslo, 1843-1943. Oslo: Oslo apostolic vicariate. p. 418. 
• Brodersen, Øistein Grieve (in Norwegian). Norge-Rom, 1153-1953 : Jubileumsskrift, 800 år siden opprettelsen av Den norske kirkeprovins. Trondheim. p. 49.