‘Papabile’ of the Day: Cardinal Anders Arborelius

Yet even in that hostile terrain, Catholicism today is growing – if not by leaps and bounds, at least at a steady pace, adding an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 members annually. Official figures put the total Catholic community at 130,000, but everyone knows the real number is much higher since many immigrant Catholics don’t register. The uptick is being driven in part by new arrivals, but also by a surprising number of conversions among native Swedes.

To some extent, the Church in Sweden today is the entire global Church in miniature, a cosmopolitan mix of Swedish converts along with Poles and French, swelled by recent immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including a large cohort of Chaldean Catholics from Iraq.

The man presiding over this counter-intuitive Catholic revival is 75-year-old Cardinal Anders Arborelius, himself a convert to Catholicism, and seen by many as an ideal missionary to an increasingly secular world.

Born in Sorengo, Switzerland, in 1949, Arborelius grew up in a nominally Lutheran household which wasn’t especially active in the faith. By all accounts, however the young Arborelius himself had a keen religious sense, feeling himself drawn to a life of prayer and contemplation, and at the age of 20 he converted to Catholicism in the city of Malmö.

At that stage it was natural enough for Arborelius to feel drawn to the priesthood, and after reading the autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, he decided to join the order of the Discalced Carmelites. He would eventually study at the Pontifical Teresian Institute in Rome, learning Italian, while also earning a degree in modern languages (English, Spanish and French) at the Swedish University of Lund.

Arborelius was ordained to the priesthood in September 1979 and shortly thereafter took up residence at a Carmelite monastery in Norraby in the south of Sweden, where he would live for the next decade.

Over the course of those years Arborelius earned a reputation as an effective pastor and thinker, bringing him to the attention of the Vatican. In 1998 Pope John Paul II named him Bishop of Stockholm, making him the first ethnically Swedish Catholic bishop in the country, and only the second native Scandinavian bishop, since the era of the Protestant Reformation.

From the beginning, Arborelius made the decision that despite its small size and the historically dominant position of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, Catholicism on his watch wouldn’t just sit on the cultural sidelines. He became active in promoting pro-life movements, as well as being outspoken in defense of the country’s growing population of migrants and refugees. He took on active role in promoting youth organizations and movements in the Church, while writing a number of books on religious themes.

For a full decade, from 2005 to 2015, Arborelius served as the president of the bishops’ conference of Scandinavia. In October 2016 he hosted a visit to Sweden by Pope Francis, the heart of which was a joint Catholic/Lutheran commemoration of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation.

The act of coming together was considered especially striking given the historically bad blood between the two Christian confessions in the country:  Beginning in the 16th century, Catholics were persecuted and even put to death in Sweden, and as recently as 1951 Catholics were barred from becoming doctors, teachers and nurses. Catholic convents and monasteries, such as the one Arborelius himself had lived in, were banned until the 1970s.

On the back of that trip, Pope Francis named Arborelius a cardinal in 2017, making him the first-ever cardinal from Sweden. The elevation made Arborelius even more of a point of reference in his home country – in June 2022, for example, he was awarded a medal by the King of Sweden for his contributions to national life.

In terms of his ideological orientation, Arborelius is notoriously difficult to pin down. He’s unabashedly traditional on matters of sexual morality; among other things, he oversaw the publication of St. Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae in Sweden in 2007, in the run-up to the document’s 40^th anniversary the next year, praising its “reverence of nature” also in the arena of “sexuality and reproduction.” He’s come out in opposition to women’s ordination, optional clerical celibacy and the open-ended German “synodal way.”

Yet Arborelius also has views conventionally seen as more progressive on matters such as ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue (including with Islam), immigration, climate change, and Pope Francis’s call for a more “synodal” style of decision-making in the Church, as well as the late pope’s restrictions on celebration of the old Latin Mass.

On a personal level, it’s almost impossible to find anyone who dislikes Arborelius. He’s seen as open, generous, and affable, someone given to genuine dialogue and possessing a keen interest in others, as well as a man of real spiritual depth. If anything, some have raised the question of whether Arborelius is almost too nice, suggesting that his penchant for avoiding conflict has, at times, produced a weak and vacillating approach to governance in his own diocese.

The case for Arborelius?

If one fundamental job requirement of a pope is to be the Evangelist-in-Chief of the Catholic Church, Arborelius arguably fits the bill. He’s seen as especially gifted as a missionary to the most secular corners of Europe, where the fires of faith seem to be in greatest danger of going out. Despite the dynamism of the Church today across the developed world, no one’s quite ready simply to write Europe off, and Arborelius might be seen as uniquely capable of reviving the Church’s fortunes on the Old Continent.

Further, his intriguing mix of conservative positions on some matters and progressive stances on others could make him an ideal compromise candidate between those seeking continuity with Pope Francis and those desiring greater doctrinal stability and clarity. Each would get at least part of what they want with Arborelius, along with the assurance that the new pope is someone would at least listen to their concerns and take them seriously.

In terms of the conventional logic of conclave handicapping, Arborelius ticks a number of the usual boxes.

He’s certainly got the command of languages conventionally seen as desirable, and at 75 he’s right in the sweet spot of the desired age profile (the last two popes, Benedict XVI and Francis, were elected at 78 and 76 respectively). While he doesn’t have a great deal of international experience in terms of serving abroad, he has traveled widely over the years, and in any event, the world has come to him in Sweden in the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Church over which he presides.

The case against?

Arborelius’ reputation as an indecisive and occasionally weak administrator doesn’t help, especially at a time when most cardinals believe that finishing the Vatican reform started under Pope Francis (or correcting it, depending on your point of view) is going to require a strong hand at the rudder.

Moreover, the way Arborelius blends continuity and rupture with the Pope Francis legacy could hurt his chances more than it helps them, leaving him effectively a man without a country, meaning without a strong base of support in any camp.

Further, Arborelius himself has conceded that he hasn’t quite developed the wide network of relationships among his fellow cardinals that would come in handy in terms of the electoral math of the conclave, saying recently that he knows personally only about 20 or 30 of his fellow electors – a far cry from the 89 votes needed to cross the two-thirds threshold.

In a recent interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Arborelius offered a profile of the next pope.

“That’s what people really need in a time like this — that we find someone who can help them be freed from sin, from hatred, from violence, to bring about reconciliation and a deeper encounter,” he said.

Time will tell if his brother cardinals agree with that assessment … and if they see Arborelius himself as the man to do it.