Catholic bishops from Scandinavia have reported a dramatic upsurge of
vocations, with 60 training to be priests out of a total Catholic
population of just 250,000.
The news was included in a statement from the Iceland plenary of the
eight-member Scandinavian Bishops' Conference, hosted by Bishop Peter
Burcher of Reykjavik, which said it had established a conference of
rectors to co-ordinate the work of Catholic seminaries now operating in
Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
In their statement, the bishops said they had debated evangelisation
and ecumenical relations in the predominantly Lutheran region, and been
received by President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson of Iceland, who had "shown
much interest" in the work of the Catholic Church.