Cardinal Parolin meets with Danish foreign minister, king amid Greenland controversy
During his visit to Denmark to commemorate the 12th centenary of St. Ansgar’s mission to the country, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, held a private meeting on Jan. 26 with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen at Eigtveds Pakhus, the historic seat of diplomacy for the Kingdom of Denmark.
The meeting took place at a time of international tension, in which the sovereignty of Greenland — an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark — has become a sensitive issue following recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has suggested he would use military force to annex the territory.
Parolin’s travel agenda in Copenhagen began Jan. 24 with ecumenical vespers at the Lutheran Vor Frue Domkirke (Our Lady’s Cathedral) in the Danish capital.
Before the meeting with Rasmussen, the cardinal visited King Frederik X at Amalienborg Palace and then visited the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Vedbæk.
On Jan. 23, the Vatican Press Office published the letter in which Pope Leo XIV delegated Parolin to represent the Holy See at the celebrations commemorating the Benedictine monk and missionary St. Ansgar, a highly esteemed figure considered the first Christian missionary in northern Europe.
To commemorate this anniversary, the Danish authorities have organized a national program that includes religious services, pilgrimages, conferences, and ecumenical gatherings.
Indifference can never be an option
According to Vatican News, at a prayer service attended by members of the Lutheran church, Parolin emphasized the need to adopt a “perspective of concrete service and shared responsibility” if full unity is to be achieved. “Christian witness,” he explained, “cannot remain abstract or be limited to words.”
He also stated that in the face of the suffering of individuals and nations, “we cannot look away, nor can indifference ever be an option.”
Referring to St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, from which the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was taken, the secretary of state noted that unity in the Church is not uniformity but should be considered “living communion in diversity.”
Parolin celebrated Mass on Sunday, Jan. 25, in St. Ansgar Catholic Cathedral as a papal legate to the celebrations of the 12th centenary of the beginning of St. Ansgar’s mission in Denmark.
St. Ansgar was born around the year 801 in what is now northern France and carried out his missionary work in Denmark and Sweden. In 831 he was appointed the first archbishop of Hamburg and later led the archdiocese of Bremen, both in Germany, where he died in 865.
A mission founded not on ‘strategies or success, but on fidelity to Jesus’
The secretary of state pointed to the enduring relevance of the Benedictine monk in a world “wounded by new forms of slavery — economic, cultural, and spiritual — and marked by exclusion and indifference.”
“It was the ninth century when the Benedictine monk arrived in northern Europe for a mission founded not on ‘strategies or success, but on fidelity to Jesus,’” he noted.
In his homily, Parolin reviewed the main stages of St. Ansgar’s life, from his entry as a child into the French monastery of Corbie to his transfer to the monastery of Corvey in present-day Germany.
The prelate emphasized that St. Ansgar never wavered, displaying “courage and confidence” that impressed his contemporaries. In his mission, St. Ansgar “faced enormous opposition and seemed to be a failure, but success was not what he sought,” the cardinal noted.
The story of St. Ansgar, the secretary of state said, reminds us that the Church grows “not primarily in numbers, but in men and women who live lives of fidelity, perseverance, and love: the mission begins with transformed hearts.”
Parolin invited his listeners to “renew their evangelical boldness” and “safeguard hope where history seems weary,” demonstrating that fruitfulness “is born of the love that unites and of trust in God’s continuous action, even in the most fragile situations.”
Denmark, ‘indelibly marked by its Christian heritage’
The cardinal emphasized that Denmark “is indelibly marked by its Christian heritage” and that the Catholic community, together with the Lutherans and all people of goodwill, contributes “through service, solidarity, and respect for human dignity.”
During his stay, Parolin also visited St. Joseph Carmelite Monastery in Hillerød and met with the Benedictine nuns of Our Lady’s Monastery in Birkerød, in a gesture of pastoral and spiritual outreach.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.