Have you heard of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in Turku? I first heard about it from priests of the Lutheran parish of Porvoo who were visiting us. My interest was immediately aroused. When I asked Marko Tervaportti about it, he encouraged me to interview Benito Casagrande of Turku, a Catholic architect who has played a major role in preserving the historic centre of the city. Encouraged by the parish priest of St Bridget and Blessed Hemming Parish, I contacted Casagrande.
The most precious and beautiful part of historic Turku lies along the banks of the River Aura. Turku Cathedral stands on one bank, while the beautiful Casagrande House stands on the other. Deep within the Casagrande House lies the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. Hidden there are the foundations and graves of the medieval Church of the Holy Spirit. The chapel is the burial place of 650 medieval Catholics. The Reformation buried the church, and with it the Catholic dead were forgotten for centuries.
Through many remarkable coincidences, Benito Casagrande, a Knight of Malta, has become the guardian of this burial place. Those buried here have touched him deeply. Human dignity does not disappear in death. God created human beings for himself, and even after death we belong to God. Through the deceased of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Benito has become profoundly aware of this. He carefully safeguards the peace of the graves of those who lived in the Middle Ages. Benito allows their bones to be used for medical and archaeological research only if the researchers show respect for the inviolable human dignity of the deceased and guarantee that their remains will be returned to the peace of the grave.
Even in summer, no sunlight reaches the chapel, for we are deep beneath the ground. Yet the light of grace shines from Benito Casagrande’s eyes and from his whole presence, and with the same enthusiasm he tells us the story of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. We must turn our gaze towards Rome, where from the twelfth century onwards the Hospitaller Order of the Holy Spirit offered assistance to the sick, the poor and pilgrims in Houses of the Holy Spirit. Following this example, a House of the Holy Spirit was established in Turku in the fourteenth century. With good humour, Benito remarks that this may well have been the first social welfare and healthcare system on Finnish soil.
Indulgence letters dating from 1396 reveal that the chapel of the House of the Holy Spirit in Turku was one of the stages on a pilgrimage route for all pilgrims who sincerely repented of their sins and had confessed them. In our present ecumenical age, the chapel in the basement of the Casagrande House is one of six stages on a Turku pilgrimage route whose origins go back to the fourteenth century. The Pilgrimage Centre in Turku maintains this route, which was opened in 2025.
John III, son of the Reformation king Gustav Vasa, grew attached to the Finnish people during his time as Duke of Finland. After becoming King of Sweden, he had the Church of the Holy Spirit built beside the House of the Holy Spirit for the Finnish-speaking population. On the opposite bank of the River Aura, the Church of St Mary and St Henry served more particularly the Swedish-speaking population. Construction of the church began in 1588. As the Reformation advanced and after the death of John III, Governor-General Per Brahe had a main road, Stora Brahegatan, built through Turku, covering the Church of the Holy Spirit and its burial ground. They thus disappeared into oblivion for centuries.
In the hands of Benito and Irma Casagrande, the Church of the Holy Spirit has come to life again as a chapel. After the block passed into the ownership of the Casagrande family, extensive archaeological excavations were carried out in the area. The ruins of the chancel of the church built by John III were discovered, together with graves within and around it. The altar of the present chapel is a large millstone. Behind it stand traditional hay-drying poles, with a plough and an anchor resting at their feet. The “catacomb dead” of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit were neither royalty nor nobility. They were ordinary working people, poor Finns. This is a burial and memorial place for the humble and forgotten: for those who sought refuge in the House of the Holy Spirit in the Middle Ages; for those of whom our Pope Leo XIV writes in his first Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te. It can hardly be a coincidence that the document was published on the memorial of God’s poor man, St Francis of Assisi.
Christ descended to the lowest places of the world, taking upon his shoulders all the suffering of human life. In the chapel, a crucifix made of barbed wire recalls this. We are in a place where we can experience with particular intensity the kenosis, the silence of Holy Saturday: “Christ Jesus was in the form of God, yet he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming like human beings. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Phil 2:6–11).
The chapel is open to everyone seeking silence and God. Visits can be arranged by booking a time through the Casagrande House website, casagrandentalo.fi. The website contains much more information about the Chapel of the Holy Spirit and its history, which is also part of the history of Catholicism in Finland during its earliest centuries. More about Benito Casagrande and the remarkable events through which the Chapel of the Holy Spirit has become a living place of worship can be found in the newly published biography Benito Casagrande — Enemmän kuin arkkitehti (Casagrande & Lahtinen, 2026).
Eeva Vitikka-Annala