Interview with Archbishop Leo published in Huvudstadsbladet on the occasion of his 60th birthday, 4th June 2008

We congratulate you on your birthday, although we are aware that one’s name day is a more important cause for celebration in the Orthodox tradition. Why is that so?

“For Orthodox believers their name day unites them with the saints, with those who intercede for them in heaven. On the feast day of the saint after whom we are named we can humbly take pride in our common name day.”

The Orthodox and the Swedish-speakers are both small minorities in Finland. Do these groups have anything else in common?

“Thinking of minorities that have something in common with the Orthodox population, one might mention certain Free Church communities in the Swedish-speaking areas of Ostrobothnia that have much the same cheerfully critical attitude towards the cultural majority as we Orthodox do. Living as a cultural minority is a great blessing, something that one perhaps learns to appreciate only in one’s later years.”

The Orthodox Church regards itself as a worldwide apostolic church, and yet many Orthodox churches have a powerful ethnic or nationalistic orientation. Is there not something contradictory in this?

“The nationalistic emphasis is connected with the upheavals taking place in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which are important regions for the Orthodox Church. Although the western media mostly claim otherwise, I would maintain that rather than nationalism on the part of the churches, this is a question of political manoeuvres by which those in power try to cash in on the affection felt by the common people for the Orthodox Church.”

You have the same birthday as Field-Marshal Mannerheim. What is your opinion of him? 

“Mannerheim was a multicultural product of the tsarist system in Russia, and he valued the Orthodox Church more as an institution than as a power for spiritual development. It is for this reason that I can also understand that opinions continue to be divided over him in Finland even today.”

OT 4.6.2008