On December 24, Pope Francis inaugurated the Jubilee of Hope with the opening of the Holy Door in Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Ahead of the Jubilee’s launch, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference released a pastoral letter, discussing the relationship between the “logic of the Jubilee” and human dignity.
The Pillar interviewed Bishop Raimo Goyarrola of Helsinki, vice president of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference, about the letter, the Jubilee, secularization and Christmas.
Goyarrola, a priest of Opus Dei and a physician, has lived in Helsinki since 2006, when he was assigned to work as a university chaplain in the country.
His ministry soon expanded — in 2011, he was appointed Helsinki's diocesan vicar general. In November 2023, he became the bishop of Helsinki, after a four-year sede vacante period.
The interview was conducted in Spanish. It has been translated and edited for length and clarity.
How are the bishops and Catholics of Northern Europe preparing for the Jubilee?
With great enthusiasm and hope, despite the difficulties.
We are very close to the war in Ukraine and are suffering economic difficulties because of the war and the price of electricity, but the Jubilee is a year of grace and hope.
The pope hit the nail on the head when he chose the theme of hope for the Jubilee when one sees how the world is, with so many wars, violence, and crises.
So we receive this Jubilee with joy and much hope, because God is good, he is merciful, he is with us, and he loves us.
But how can Christians live hope amid all these problems and in a world - especially in a region like yours - that is becoming less and less Christian?
Well, precisely because we are Christians (laughs).
God has chosen us and called us by name. Baptism is something very profound.
It is true that if you look at the world map, Christians are not the majority. Still, being a Christian is already a source of joy, peace, and hope because a God who is all-powerful, who is the Lord of history, chose me personally to be a Christian and to bring this message of peace and joy to the world.
If a Christian is not filled with hope, he can hardly call himself a Christian.
You published this pastoral letter just before Christmas, and the Jubilee begins precisely on Christmas Eve. What is the relationship between the Jubilee and Christmas?
I was doing another interview in which I made a Christmas greeting video for the Christian communities of Finland in front of the Nativity Scene.
Well, there in the Nativity Scene, I saw the Child Jesus…And you see there that God, who is the Lord, almighty, becomes a child and trusts in man.
He trusts in Mary and Joseph, a young couple, who then have to flee because [Herod] wants to kill Him and there He goes, like a baby, without doing anything. But in the end, it is the Child who does everything.
He is a God who apparently does nothing at a human level, a baby who trusts his family who takes him to Egypt, a family who concerned themselves about what will He eat, who chose His clothes for him, who when they were in the Nile made sure that there were no crocodiles (laughs) when He played, who take care of Him. He is a God who allows himself to be helped by man. This fills us with hope.
It’s crazy that God trusts in man, knowing perfectly well how we are. Of course, Christ also had the best parents in the world, didn't he? But God makes us part of this family as Christians.
This hope speaks to us of trust and abandonment in God. Whatever happens in the world is because God wants it or because God allows it.
Sometimes there are things that God wants and we do not understand them, and there are things that God does not want, but He allows them to bring about a great good.
This can be a great theme for prayer on these days of Christmas: Jesus abandons himself in the hands of humanity and tells us, “Here I am, as a baby.” And we have to respond that it is our turn: “Jesus, I abandon myself in your hands, even if you are a baby, even if I do not see you, I abandon myself in your arms.”
And this will be a big step in our spiritual life. And I think it is a great theme for meditation during this Jubilee, and that is what I have been praying for myself and for the Catholic community in Finland: that we take this step of abandoning ourselves in God because the Christian hope is to abandon ourselves into the hands of God the Father, because we have Jesus who is our brother.
The pastoral letter says, “For a society to thrive, individuals within it must first become a people, bound together by a covenant of justice consonant with natural and divinely inspired law.” Do you think this is the case in contemporary liberal societies, or are they missing something?
This is the risk of today's liberal societies: they analyze the individual but without its context; they see the individual without considering that he is a social being, born in a family, they see him almost like a clone. It is noticeable that they want to create a society of clones without social relations and without the protection of the family.
Human dignity comes from the fact that I am a human being, the son of a father and a mother, but deep down I have dignity because I am a son of God.
But remove the first barrier - the family - and the state has a free hand. If it is an honest state, it will seek the common good, but if it is not? We see what happens with ideologies, which are totally irrational, that seek to control and eliminate human filters - social and family relationships. Then there is no one to shelter or protect us, and so it is very easy to be carried away by the current.
And what are the ideologies or false beliefs that you see causing these problems?
I am going to give you a bit of a theological answer.
Satan is not wise, but he is smart. Against God, he can't do anything. Now, what he can do is attack the image of God in man.
Part of that image of God in the human being is that we are male and female. So ideology attacks this anthropological, biological, psychological, and spiritual reality. And behind this ideology, I think there may be a spiritual being who wants to destroy this reality.
So, God creates man and woman in His image. These ideologies also want to destroy marriage and the family in many ways. First, for many years with the promotion of divorce. Then, by altering even the semantics of marriage itself, wanting to say that marriage is the union between any two human beings. But why only two? Why not three? The reality of marriage has been destroyed.
All these are ideologies that go against rationality and common sense. They go against the fact that man has been created and that the world has an order and meaning. So, at the bottom, these ideologies go against science and truth. They question biology itself and the truth of man and creation, the truth of everything.
Satan is very active, which can be a good sign because perhaps we are at the gates of a new springtime in the Church.
St. John Paul II said that the third millennium is either Christian or it simply will not be.
We are in a bit of a battle like in Lord of the Rings, where there is no middle ground. Either I am on the side of light or on the dark side of Mordor. I have to make a life choice. And many have opted for the culture of death, the culture of darkness.
If not, how do you understand that during such a strong pandemic, with so many people dying every day, the laws that were discussed in many of our countries were to extend abortion and euthanasia? It has no common sense, no political sense.
It is pure ideology, pure irrationality that in a pandemic where so many citizens were dying, so many human beings, the law you are discussing is euthanasia.
We have reached a point where we are not doing politics, but anti-politics.
The letter makes a connection between what the letter calls “the logic of the Jubilee” and human dignity. Could you explain a little bit how this works?
The Jubilee is a year of joy. But joy because of what? Because there is repentance.
Many people in this world have no regrets. Now, are they able to be joyful? I don't think so. I think the greatest joy comes from asking for forgiveness and being forgiven because deep down it tells me that I am loved and that I love. I learn to ask for forgiveness when I love because I realize when I fail or hurt someone else.
If I don't love, what am I going to ask for forgiveness for? I just don't care about offending anyone.
So, the more love, the more forgiveness, and the more forgiveness, the more love. The Jubilee is a year of joy because the Church, as a good mother, offers us a time to ask for forgiveness and to purify ourselves, and in this purification, human dignity shines.
Why is this so? Because, I repeat, human dignity exists because God exists, because we are the image of God. Without God it is very difficult, if not impossible, to speak of human dignity. Without God, what is human dignity based on? On the laws of Parliament? How do we know that we are created equal if dignity depends on something that changes so much?
So, out with the pessimism, the guilt, the negative weight in the inner life. We Christians live an interior life of joy. When I purify myself of my miseries, I see the human dignity of others, I see with the eyes of Jesus, and seeing others with the eyes of Jesus, I will be able to see people who are brothers and sisters who need my help, my service, my affection and my forgiveness.
I will also be able to love with the heart of Jesus and defend the dignity of all people, regardless of whether they are from my country, my party, my ideology, etc., we are all equal!
The Jubilee’s logic of forgiveness, joy and God's grace, helps us to see and defend human dignity, which is brightened by my purification and my joy in being able to see others with the eyes of God and to love them with the heart of Jesus.
You mention in the letter that “when our countries were evangelised a millennium or so ago, a major civilisational step forward was the recognition of each person’s sovereign dignity, which was seen to begin in the womb.” Do you think that secularization is the reason behind the denial of this dignity?
I would distinguish between two types of secularization: a passive secularization, which is just going with the flow. It is a lukewarm secularization, people who are good but who let themselves be carried away by indifference, by seeing that everyone does things in a certain way, so they move away from God without even realizing it. They are carried away by the river. It is the lukewarmness of having one foot here and one foot there.
Another thing is active secularization. There are people who actively want to eradicate Jesus Christ and his message from the world. So, this second secularization is painful, it is sad and it is seen in many ideologies and political tendencies, as in a certain form of liberalism.
If these currents or ideas lead us to eradicate the dignity of the human being as the image of God, the result is that he is no longer a person, he is an object, a number, a stepping stone, a means and no longer an end in himself.
So, the two secularizations go hand-in-hand and are equally painful. But many people are carried away by the first one, because it is permissive, it is indecisiveness, it is what the Book of Revelations says: You are neither cold nor hot, then I will vomit you out of my mouth.
Right now in Finland, it is very cold, but sometimes there are days of -1 ºC (30 ºF) or 0 ºC (32 ºF), which is lukewarm weather (laughs) for us, and when this happens, everybody gets sick. Everyone comes down with the flu, with colds. And that's just it, the lukewarmness makes us sick. If you are at -20 ºC (-4 ºF) nobody gets sick because there is no virus, if you are at 20 ºC (86 ºF), nobody gets sick either, but when you are in the middle everybody gets sick.
Both secularizations are harmful and both are consuming the West, both the one of passive lukewarmness and the one of people who hate faith, who know faith and reject it. Both are harmful.
But for both, there is the same solution: apostolate. Those of us who are not on either of these two shores are light and salt, we can speak of Jesus with our lives, bearing witness.
This witness helps us to rekindle the people who are becoming lukewarm so that they may return to the Church and find Christ in her, who is mother, is light, and is the way of salvation because she is the body of Christ.
You close the letter by saying “May we credibly witness to this newness as Christ’s disciples through generous charity, firm communion and brave justice, illumined by the splendour of Truth.” But there seems to be something missing: how can we do this?
Listening to this question, the first Christians come to mind.
They were faced with a growing empire, something that in a way helped the spread of the Gospel.
But what is the key? “Look how they love one another,” as Tertullian said. That was what attracted the great early converts, Tertullian, Origen, and the great theologians of the early Church. Look how they love one another.
This is the key, it is faith with works, which is visible and real. I have no enemies, but I would love my enemies if I had them. Always love with works.
What did the first Christians do? They do not do strange things: a normal life of work, family, loving others, speaking of Jesus with their own life. It is witnessing Christ with a word, with a piece of advice, a conversation. It is Jesus acting in us.
But for this to be effective, we must pray. The first Christians converted the entire empire because they were prayerful people. And they were clear that the Mass was the center of their life.
There are very beautiful testimonies from that time. The Catechism of the Church remembers one of the Christians in North Africa during the persecution of Diocletian, who, when they were arrested, told the Romans to do whatever they wanted with them, but not to leave them without Mass.
We are the first Christians of the third millennium. To quote again John Paul II: the third millennium will either be Christian or it will not be, it will either be Christian or it will be the end of everything. And like the first Christians, our two legs are prayer and the Eucharist.
If we have a life based on the sacraments, especially the Mass, and prayer, we can go very far on these legs. We can have two arms to embrace others, to love more, and to accompany so many people who need affection and understanding. We are the arms of Christ and Our Lady in the world. Sometimes it is more effective to show affection, a smile, or a detail of service than 10 hours with a psychiatrist.
We are Christ for others. And what did Christ begin by doing? Healing the sick; that is how the kingdom of Christ began, with something as concrete and material as curing illnesses.
Jesus is in charity with others. There we show that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. There I show the truth that I am a Christian. I show that way of love and that life that I am giving to others. It is the grace of God acting through us, because we are part of the body of Christ. We are Church always.
Even in the sauna in Helsinki, as you said in your homily when you were consecrated bishop.
(laughs) When we are in the sauna, or eating a pizza or drinking beer. I am the Church on Sunday, but also on Monday at three o'clock in the afternoon and on Tuesday at five o'clock in the evening.
And that's why there is hope even though we don't always see the whole reality. Because God does.
