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Porvoo Cathedral

Evangelical Lutheran church in Finland

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (December 2008) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepLorGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Wikipedia article at [[:fi:Porvoon tuomiokirkko]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fi|Porvoon tuomiokirkko}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

60°23′50″N 25°39′27″E / 60.39722°N 25.65750°E / 60.39722; 25.65750

Porvoo Cathedral (Finnish: Porvoon tuomiokirkko; Swedish: Borgå domkyrka) is a cathedral of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of FinlandinPorvoo, Finland. It was built in the 15th century, although the oldest parts date from the 13th century.^[1] It is the seat of the Diocese of Borgå, Finland's Swedish-speaking diocese (Borgå is the Swedish language form of Porvoo). The cathedral is also used for services by the Porvoo Finnish-speaking parish, which is administratively part of the Diocese of Helsinki. The church first became a cathedral in 1723, when the diocese of Viipuri (Viborg) (now the Diocese of Tampere) moved to Porvoo, after Vyborg was ceded to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad.

History[edit]

The church was originally made of wood. The first stone walls were built between 1410 and 1420, and in about 1450, the church was expanded 4 meters (13 ft) towards the east and 6 meters (20 ft) towards the south.

The church has been destroyed by fire numerous times; in 1508 by Danish forces and in 1571, 1590 and 1708 by Russian forces. On May 29, 2006, the outer roof collapsed in a fire, but with the inner ceiling undamaged and the cathedral interiors intact.^[2] An 18-year-old man was convicted of arson and sentenced to six and a half years in prison.^[3] The cathedral was reopened on 2 July 2008.^[4]

The cathedral was the site of the opening of the first Diet of Finland on 28 March 1809, at which Finland was declared an autonomous Grand Duchy, with the Emperor of Russia (Czar / Tsar) as the Grand Duke of Finland.^[5]

The cathedral hosted the joint celebration Eucharist to mark the signing of a formal agreement between the British and Irish Anglican churches and the Nordic (Scandinavian) and Baltic Lutheran churches (completed in 1992), which took its name from Porvoo as the Porvoo Common Statement theological agreement, forming the Porvoo Communion was adopted.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Porvoon tuomiokirkko.

• Cathedral website (in Finnish and Swedish)