Catholicism is growing in the Nordic countries — due in large part to the influx of immigrants to northern Europe — including the far-flung country of Iceland, where Bishop David Tencer leads a vibrant, multicultural Church.

Bishop Tencer visited Rome earlier this month as part of a Jubilee pilgrimage sponsored by the Nordic bishops’ conference, which brought an estimated 1,100 Catholics from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland to pray in the Eternal City.

The Catholic Church in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bishop Tencer’s diocese, is made up of 90% foreigners and has Catholics from 172 different countries, the bishop, sporting his characteristic Capuchin beard, told the Register in Rome before the pilgrimage.

He added that if one were to take a survey at the cathedral on a Sunday, one could find at least 50 different languages that are spoken.

“We all say we are Catholics, but we all are very different Catholics,” the 61-year-old Franciscan Capuchin friar said. While uniting the different cultures and languages can be a challenge, these differences are also an opportunity for mutual enrichment.

Bishop Tencer explained that the diversity is also an example to the nonreligious Icelandic population, which sees the witness of people from many different countries and cultures belonging to the same Church and celebrating the liturgies together.

There are just 15,500 registered Catholics in Iceland, but the actual number is easily three to four times that, he said.

Missionary in Iceland

When Father Tencer first arrived in Iceland as a missionary in 2004, he spoke little English and no Icelandic. He joked that Icelandic is not a difficult language in general — “little children speak Icelandic” — but it was not simple for him to learn at the beginning.

“It means that I came not as a missionary who brings something for you, but I was the one who needed the help,” he explained, adding that this experience kept him humble.

Being a missionary in Iceland is also different from being a missionary in a poor or under-developed country, because “they don’t need the Catholic Church for the schools, for the hospitals,” he explained. “The only thing they need [in Iceland] is to see what it means to be Catholic.” So that is what the Church in Iceland is trying to do.

In 2015, Bishop Tencer continued his mission in Iceland, now as bishop of Reykjavik — insisting that, though he went from a “rustic” missionary friar to a bishop, he will always be “Brother David” — beard included.

Vocation in Slovakia

Humor is something that comes naturally to Bishop Tencer, who makes frequent jokes at his own expense. Laughter, he said, was a regular part of his childhood growing up in a big Catholic family in Slovakia. That relates to his episcopal motto: Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope”).

As the seventh of 10 children, his upbringing was “not exemplary,” but where the Catholic faith was part of normal, everyday life for him and his nine siblings.

One example he gave was that it was never up for debate whether to go to Sunday Mass or whether to say one’s daily prayers, but the family did not commonly recite prayers such as the Rosary together, because, as Bishop Tencer recounted it, “we are a very happy family and laughing family …”

“Sometimes it was a big problem to pray together, because somebody would start to laugh, so,” he added with a chuckle, “the prayer would finish because my mom would say, ‘Go — I won’t pray any more with you because you are laughing.’”

Another influence on his vocation was his participation in parish life as an altar boy from around age 5 until his ordination as a priest at 23.

After several years as a diocesan priest, he felt the tug to enter religious life, and with his bishop’s permission, he entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

Trusting Catholic Youth

In recent years, Bishop Tencer has started to be recognized — including by Pope Francis — for his bushy beard, which is not a typical feature of most high-ranking clergy.

In 2018, the Capuchin found himself on a bigger stage with his participation in the Vatican’s youth synod, where he shared his perspective on the future of the Church.

Bishop Tencer told the Register he thought some language in the preparatory documents for the synod revealed a lack of trust in young people, so this is what he tried to address in his three-minute presentation to the 300-some synod participants, most of whom were bishops.

“I was very angry, really very angry,” he explained, “because I said, ‘What does it mean that we like to help the youth when we don’t trust them?’”

He made a prediction, he said: “And my prophecy is that, after 30 years, the Catholic Church will be growing, because the Catholic Church is growing ... and there will be a synod. And after these 30 years, none of us will participate in this synod because we all will be dead, but there will be the new man in white cloth here, and there will be the new men here around me, the bishops, and the Catholic Church will be beautiful and continue.”

“And the new pope and new bishops,” Bishop Tencer continued, “will be these youth we do not trust today. They are the future bishops, and they are the future popes, and theologians, and all the people who are working on the Synod of Bishops.”

“Whether we can trust them or not is our problem, but the Church will continue,” he underlined.

Vocations in Iceland

The Reykjavik bishop takes the same approach to the issue of priestly vocations in his diocese and elsewhere. For one, he is not afraid about there being “enough good Catholics” in the younger generations.

There are many good Catholics among today’s young people, he said, though he agrees they are different from his generation.

When everyone who is over 40 years old will die, “the Church will continue and will be, maybe, a little bit of a different Church,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter what we think. What matters is what God is doing.”

Bishop Tencer has carried that perspective with him as he shepherds the Church in Iceland into its growing future.

“When I started as bishop, it was quite a difficult situation because I was the youngest [clergy member] of the diocese,” he recalled. “So I said, ‘I’m sorry, but what are you waiting for? We need to change something.’”

Bishop Tencer said the problem cannot be that there are no vocations, “because the promise of the Lord is that there will be vocations.” The problem, he thought, might be that they were not fostering those vocations.

And after almost 10 years leading the Diocese of Reykjavik, today, the bishop is seeing fruit.

The diocese had its first priestly ordination after many years in 2023, and it has two seminarians currently in formation. “So I am completely not afraid about the future of the Diocese of Reykjavik,” he said. “We have plenty of vocations ... in potenza [potentially].”