A Swedish priest in the city of Gävle is suspected of helping a migrant escape a Migration Board deportation facility by smuggling him out in a suitcase.
The 20-year-old migrant disappeared from the facility on February 23rd after a visit from two women, one of whom is an ordained priest in the Church of Sweden. The priest is said to have arrived at the facility with a large suitcase she claimed was for an adult baptism ceremony.
Now, the Director-General of the Migration Board Mikael Ribbenvik has accused the priest of using the suitcase to smuggle the migrant out of the detention centre, Nyheter Idag reports.
Ribbenvik wrote a letter to Church of Sweden Archbishop Antje Jackelén concerning the matter, saying it had seriously damaged the agency’s trust in the Swedish church.
“A priest has abused our trust. In normal cases, you can’t bring a bag, but they got confidence and then this exemption was made. We’ve been tricked,” he said.
Swedish news website Samhällsnytt had made allegations regarding the incident in late February, stating that Camilla Ulén, a priest who serves the Värmdö parish in Stockholm, was the one behind the smuggling of the migrant.
The website stated the migrant was an Afghan national who had been in Sweden since 2015 and that the Migration Board had serious doubts about the validity of his Christian conversion, which was the reason he was seeking asylum in Sweden.
A reporter from Samhällsnytt spoke to Ulén by phone and the priest dismissed the allegations that she helped the migrant escape.
The Swedish church, which has become well-known as a hub of “woke” left-liberalism, clashed with police in 2017 over migrant deportations in Skåne after a raid on a church-sponsored migrant camp.
The church has been not only remained pro-mass migration since the height of the 2015 migrant crisis but has gone out of its way to accommodate Muslims, in particular.
In October 2015, Stockholm archbishop Eva Brunne, the first openly lesbian bishop in the world, asked churches to remove crosses and allow for the creation of Muslim prayer spaces.
She later went on to say that she had more in common with Muslims than she did with conservative Christians.