The strange experience of travelling Europe as a Danish Catholic.

The strange experience of travelling Europe as Danish and Catholic.It’s a strange experience being Danish and Catholic. You don’t really notice it at first, but the moment you step outside of Scandinavia, you realize just how unusual it is.

When travelling, I love connecting my destination to my saintly friends. The Catholic Church is full of these souls who, through their unity with Christ, have lived lives of incredible depth and meaning. Visiting the places where they lived makes them feel more tangible, more real, almost like old friends you are finally meeting in person.

The saints are not distant historical figures. They are living witnesses to what a life with Christ can look like, each one different, each one personal, yet all deeply united in Him. Following their footsteps, even physically, has a way of strengthening that connection.

For years, it has been a dream of mine to visit two specific locations because of the holy people who lived there. One of them is Derry, Ireland, where the late Sister Clare Crockett spent her youth and childhood, and the other is San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio carried out his ministry.

What tied these two trips together was not only my deep desire to visit these places, but also the local Catholics I met there. After spending a few days in Derry, visiting the beautiful memorials for Sister Crockett, the churches, and the museums about the Troubles, I went to visit the cathedral. Outside, in the rare Irish sun, a man was tending to the cathedral garden. As I stood reading an informational sign in front of it, we started talking.

His name was Bill. He asked me if I was Catholic and where I was from. I said, “Yes, I converted. I’m Danish.” He looked at me with surprise, and with his thick Irish accent, he said: “What, a Danish Catholic? I’ve never met one of you. You Vikings over there never believe in God.”  We laughed a bit about it. We spoke about the difficulties of being Catholic in Denmark, and he shared how the Troubles had once made it difficult to be Catholic in Derry. While the situations were very different, there was still a shared understanding. We then spoke about Sister Claire Crockett, about the impact she had had on the area, and I shared how she had influenced my own heart.

He then took a long time to show me around the church and introduced me to people in the parish. There was a warmth and curiosity in the way he welcomed me that stayed with me. What struck me most in that moment was our shared faith. I had nothing else in common with this man, and yet I felt more connected to him than to many of my own friends and family. I did not yet understand how big of an influence his comment about

“You Vikings over there never believe in God.”” had on me, but months later, when I visited San Giovanni - it dawned on me.

When visiting this beautiful mountain town, something similar happened. A man at the reception of the beautiful, Easy Green Hotel, asked me where I was from and why I had come to visit Padre Pio. I explained my reasons and told him that I was Danish.

With genuine concern, he asked: “What happened to you? You people up north are never Catholic!”

I tried to explain my story to him. He was right; we are generally not Catholic, and I had only become Catholic by “accidentally” walking into a church and encountering the Eucharist. It completely turned my soul upside down, and nothing had been the same since - with Jesus being real, my life had to reflect that in every way.

His comment reminded me of my Irish friend Bill, and that was when it really struck me. The lack of faith in Scandinavia was not just something I had experienced personally, it was something well known among Catholics across Europe.

This kind Italian man ended up spending the entire day showing me around the town and even invited me for dinner with his family. For me, meeting people like this, encountering their faith, being asked about my own, and connecting over our shared love for Christ stayed with me. Not only because it is something rare in Denmark, but because these encounters planted the first seeds of Mission Ansgarius.

At the time when I met these two gentlemen, I had been a convert for a little over three years. Throughout this period, I had been juggling faith, culture, and language. I had not yet been able to put into words how this struggle influenced my spiritual life, but encountering these two men made something clear to me that should perhaps have been obvious from the very beginning:

1. That I am Catholic in a dominantly non-Catholic region

2. That what weakens the Church here is the very small community of Catholics and the lack of Catholic resources

   
   

The second point raised a question for me: what came first, the egg or the hen? Are there few resources because there are few Catholics, or are there few Catholics because there are few resources?

I don’t have the answer to that question. But I do know this: something has to begin.

I am determined to use my skills and talents as an engineer, in problem-solving and software development, to do my part in addressing the lack of resources. And perhaps, through that, more Catholics will come.

In both small and significant ways, these two men gave me an outside perspective on how Scandinavia is seen by the wider Catholic world. A bit of a lost cause, far from God. But it does not have to be like that. That is why I teamed up with Father Daniel Ebert Steiner and a small team of dedicated Catholics to develop a space where the Scandinavian Catholic community can support each other and get educated on Catholic teachings.

The software for the app Mission Ansgarius has been developed, and we are now on the journey of raising the funds needed to create the content itself.

If this mission speaks to you, and if you would like to help bring the Catholic faith closer to Scandinavia again, we would be deeply grateful for your support.

You can contribute through the link below:

Support the Mission