Luca Cesarini

Luca Cesarini was born in Rome in 1960 of an Italian father and a Swedish mother. After finishing school, he moved to Sweden, where he graduated at the University of Uppsala in Art History and Theology. He went to South Africa and later to Israel to study ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.

In 1989, he was ordained as a minister in the Lutheran Church of Sweden and moved with his family to the Swedish west coast where he served in different parishes in and around Gothenborg. He is familiar with the history of Italy and its geography as well as with Bridget of Sweden and has published several books about those subjects. As secretary of the Society for the Preservation of Brigit’s Memory in Rome, in several audiences with the now-canonized Pope John Paul II, he spoke to the Pope and handed over signatures from Swedish people with the appeal to proclaim Saint Bridget as a patron saint of Europe which happened in 1999.

Some years ago, he left ordained ministry and returned to the Catholic Church as a layman. He is currently an art history teacher at the Catholic folk high school of St Elisabet in Gothenburg. He also works as a lecturer and travel manager arranging cultural and historical trips to Italy and the Holy Land.