What would St. Finian have thought, he who is known as the "Teacher of the Irish Saints?" In the handsome Dublin church named for the great 6th century monk, a new pastor was preaching last week, and in his accents there was precious little of the Liffey. For a fact, the Rev. Hans Dietrich Mittorp was German, and a Lutheran at that—the first Lutheran pastor with a parish in Ireland for more than two centuries.
Since a community of Danes flourished there in the 18th century. Ireland has not had enough Lutherans to support a church. But since World War II, German and Swedish technicians, students, servants and refugees from Red regimes have built the community up again. A year ago the Dublin Lutherans applied for a pastor of their own. To Hans Mittorp, 45, it meant leaving his precious parish at Paderborn, Westphalia and going to a land whose language he hardly knew. When he finally decided, he says, "I took it joyously."
Germany's great churchman, Bishop Hanns Lilje of Hanover, himself went to Dublin to install the new pastor ("He comes," said the bishop, "as a messenger of Christ"). Pastor Mittorp preaches to a community of 300 Lutherans in Dublin every other Sunday and on the Sundays in between, to 200 Lutherans in Belfast. His polyglot congregation is the first Lutheran church in Europe not organized on national lines. Says he: "This is the right way. The church should not be bound by nationalism but by ties of belief."
Eventually, Pastor Mittorp and his flock hope to have a church of their own. In the meantime, the Church of Ireland (an affiliate of the Church of England) lends them St. Finian's.