Krist Konge Kirke (English: Jesus Christ the King Parish) is the unique Catholic parish in Greenland. It depends on the Diocese of Copenhagen which includes 48 parishes in Denmark, and two North Atlantic parishes: Greenland and the Faroe Islands, totaling 50. The Diocese is headed by a bishop, who in turn is assisted by priests and deacons. The current bishop is Czeslaw Kozon. The Diocese of Copenhagen is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. The current Pope is Benedict XVI. The Parish is headed by a parish priest who performed the religious functions in the church. The current parish priest is Father Walter German Pereyra Gmelin, IVE., missionary priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, who is supported by the work of the Little Sisters of Jesus (Noele, Agnes and Marie Julienne). Every Sunday the Holy Mass is performed in Danish and in English.
In a population of 57,000 people, there are only 60 registered Roman Catholics in Greenland. The Sunday attendance varies from 10 to 40 people. They come from all parts of the world, and most of them are only in the territory for a short time – most for less than three years. Therefore, there’s a constant flow of changing parishioners. The largest Catholic communities are Danish, Filipino and Polish.
History of the Catholic Church in Greenland
Catholicism was introduced to Greenland about 1000 AD. Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, visited Nidaros (modern Trondheim, Norway) and converted to Christianity while at the court of the Norwegian king.[4] He then returned to his father’s farm in Brattahlid, southern Greenland, and brought two priests sent by King Olaf Tryggvason. At that time the Church was still one Church. It was 54 years before the great split in the East and 536 years before the Reformation in Denmark.
In the space of a very short time, all the Norsemen accepted Christ and were baptized, and after some effort the people of Greenland received a bishop (bishop Arnaldur). That was the birth of the now extinct diocese of Gardar, in 1124. The first cathedral was dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Then were built 16 churches on the island, the biggest was the sandstone cathedral at Gardar (Igaliku), which was cross-shaped, 84 ft long and 60 ft wide.
The church prospered with the Norse colony which saw its peak in the 1300′s, and had an active relationship with Scandinavia and the European continent.
At one point, the Catholic Norsemen numbered around 4,000 in two settlements. But around 1450 the Norsemen had disappeared from Greenland and with them the Church.
In 1721, the Norwegian Lutheran priest and missionary Hans Egede led a joint missionary-trading expedition to Greenland. Egede found no survivors from the original colonies, and started a mission among the Inuit. A new colony was settled at Godthab (“Good Hope”) on the south-west coast, and later became Nuuk, the capital of Greenland.
As a Danish colony, Greenland remained Lutheran, which effectively closed Greenland from any Catholic presence until 1953 when religious liberty was declared and the bishop of Copenhagen, the Benedictine Theodore Suhr, invite the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate to missionize there. In the summer of 1959 Michael Wolfe O.M.I. began with the mission in Nuuk. Thus was born in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, “Christ the King Parish” (Krist Konge Kirke), which is the unique Catholic parish in Greenland.
The parish was guided by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate until 2009 when the bishop of Copenhagen, Czeslaw Kozon, entrusted it care to the “Institute of the Incarnate Word” and set as parish priest, Father Walter German Pereyra Gmelin, IVE. Before the arrival of Father Walter, the last pastor was Fr. Paul Marx from the “Missionarys Oblates of Mary Immaculate”, who is currently the pastor of the Faroe Islands. Since 1980, The parish is supported by the work of the “Little Sisters of Jesus”.
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