Niels Stensen
Niels Stensen: Scientist and bishop
Born in Copenhagen in 1538 as the son of a goldsmith, formed in the Evangelical Lutheran faith, he successfully embarked on a career as a natural scientist, which brought him to prestige all over Europe. As a doctor, anatomist, geologist, palaeontologist and rock researcher, he made groundbreaking discoveries. For him, science and belief were not mutually exclusive. The more he explored, the more he marveled at the Creator.
After an intense struggle to follow his path of faith, he was accepted into the Catholic Church in Florence in 1667. In 1675 he was ordained a priest, in 1677 a bishop and sent to Hanover as Vicar Apostolic for the Nordic Missions. Appointed as auxiliary bishop by Bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg, he also worked in the diocese of Paderborn from 1680 to 1683, and then in Hamburg.
He lived the last years of his life as a simple pastor in self-chosen poverty in Schwerin, where he died on December 5, 1686 (according to the Julian calendar on November 25).
His integrity, his ascetic life and his exemplary work as a priest and bishop were widely recognized, even beyond denominational boundaries away. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, with whom he was a friend, had his body transferred to Florence and buried in the Medici church, the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Today his rests are in a side chapel.
Niels Stensen was beatified from Pope John Paul II on October 23, 1988 in Rome. His church feast day is November 25th.
On October 14, 2019, the Archbishop of Florence Cardinal Giuseppe Betori gave the Archbishop of Paderborn a relic of the Blessed. It was transferred to the Vitus Chapel of the High Cathedral in Paderborn on November 22, 2020, which has been dedicated to his memory since his beatification.
