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Views from the Choir Loft

Catholic Liturgy in Secular Sweden

Guest Author · November 7, 2016

A guest article by Alexander Kegel, organist at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic parish in Stockholm, Sweden.|

690 TENTS ECENTLY, THE POPE visited Sweden. The main reason for this trip was the joint commemoration of the reformation, together with the Lutheran World Federation—and a lot could certainly be said about that, but not right now. However, the trip also included a mass with Sweden’s small Catholic community, which is quite unique. Sweden has only one Catholic diocese: the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm.

Our Bishop, Most Rev’d Anders Arborelius, is the shepherd of about 150,000 Catholics (mostly immigrants from all over the world), spread across the country. From the northern village of Lanavaara—where a community of nuns have their convent—it is a distance of 1850km to the southern city of Malmö, where the Pope celebrated Mass. That is roughly the same distance as between Malmö and Rome in Italy.

In this tiny yet widespread diocese, the status of the liturgy and church music is quite good and very interesting. Since 2008, there is—for the first time ever—a music director for the diocese, and he is doing a tremendous job! New organist jobs have appeared in numerous parishes around the country, workshops and courses are being held for organists, and our choirs & diocesan liturgies are usually good.

A good example of all this was the recent Mass with the Pope. A semi-annual choir weekend was planned for October, and it was decided that the participants of the choir weekend would sing during the Papal Mass a few weeks later. The results were excellent! The music included Missa de Angelis, “Jubilemus, exultemus” by François Couperin, and “O Saviour of the world” by Sir John Goss. I had the honor of singing the (Gregorian) Responsorial Psalm during the Mass, and the altar servers were mostly from the cathedral in Stockholm. 1 The liturgy was as beautiful as it can be in an outdoor stadium with 15,000 participants, and I was informed afterward that the Pope truly appreciated the music.

The Diocese has its own hymnal, called CECILIA, and the new edition from 2013 includes even more Gregorian melodies than the old one. There is very little “praise and worship” music in the parishes in Sweden and although the musical standard varies considerably, the music chosen is usually of good quality. Out of fourteen Mass ordinaries in the hymnal, ten are Gregorian (four of them Swedish adaptations), and a recent study of the usage of Gregorian chant in parishes around the country showed good results. One thing lacking is the use of propers, and although the Latin propers are being used to a degree in some parishes, the main problem is that there is no music set to the propers in Swedish. But that is also changing! There are several ongoing projects with the aim to release Swedish propers.

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I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into what can be done in a small diocese without big economic resources. With God’s help, we will continue the good work for the sacred liturgy and the Church.


We hope you enjoyed this guest article by Alexander Kegel.




NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   The brilliant altar servers from my home parish in Gothenburg had already received the honor of serving during the Canonization Mass of Sweden’s recent saint, Elisabeth Hesselblad, in the Vatican

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 24, 2024

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President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“Our Christian people regard with great joy everything that contributes to the splendor of the ceremonies. Jesus—who was poor in His private life—received ointment on His feet. See Thomas Aquinas (Prima Secundae, q. 102, art. 5, ad 10) and the holy Curé of Ars. The Church has always loved beautiful churches, and so forth. We must preserve our sacred patrimony and make sure sacred objects do not become secular possessions.”

— Abbot & Council Father denouncing “noble simplicity” during Vatican II

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