A Finnish grandmother wrote a church pamphlet citing Romans 1. Twenty-two years later, her country's highest court convicted her of a crime. On Good Friday, that timeline deserves more than a headline.
One week before Good Friday, the Supreme Court of Finland issued its verdict.
Päivi Räsänen — medical doctor, grandmother of twelve, sitting member of the Finnish Parliament, and former Minister of the Interior — was found guilty of hate speech. The crime: a church pamphlet she wrote in 2004 expressing biblical views on marriage and sexuality. The pamphlet cited Romans 1. The conviction was filed under a section of the Finnish criminal code titled "War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity."
The court ordered the pamphlet destroyed and removed from the internet. The ruling applies across the European Union under the Digital Services Act — meaning the order extends beyond Finland's borders.
Räsänen's ordeal began in June 2019 when she posted a tweet questioning her Lutheran church's official sponsorship of a Pride event and included an image of Romans 1:24-27. Finnish authorities launched a criminal investigation. By April 2021, the Prosecutor General had filed three charges of "agitation against a minority group."
In March 2022, the Helsinki District Court unanimously acquitted her on all charges. In August 2023, the Court of Appeal unanimously upheld that acquittal. The state prosecutor appealed a third time. The Supreme Court heard the case in October 2025 and issued its ruling on March 26, 2026 — splitting 3-2.
The majority convicted Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published the pamphlet, for "making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group." The court simultaneously acquitted her for the 2019 tweet — finding that quoting a biblical text in that context did not meet the threshold for criminal speech.
The distinction the court drew is precise and worth understanding. Citing the Bible is permitted. But Finnish State Prosecutor Anu Mantila argued explicitly that "it is Räsänen's interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal." The text is allowed. The belief is not.
Seven years. Three trials. Two unanimous acquittals. A 3-2 conviction at the final level — in which the court's own senior legal adviser recommended dismissal and two of the five justices agreed.
The chilling effect is the point. Most people are not former cabinet ministers with an international legal team and seven years of resolve. Most people, faced with a police investigation into a blog post or a pamphlet or a social media comment, would delete it, apologize, and resolve never to speak on the subject again.
That is what the process is designed to produce. Not a conviction — though that is now on record. Silence. The process itself is the punishment, regardless of the outcome.
This is the same week Jaden Ivey lost his NBA contract for citing Romans 1 on Instagram. The mechanism in Finland required a supreme court. The mechanism in the NBA required an afternoon. The passage was the same. The result was the same.
Good Friday is the day the world put Jesus on trial for who he was and what he said. Pilate found no basis for a charge. He convicted him anyway. The process mattered less than the outcome the institution required.
The pattern has not changed. The mechanism has.
In the first century, the instrument was Roman authority. In twenty-first century Finland, it is hate speech law — a legal category so elastic that two unanimous acquittals could be followed by a criminal conviction for the same conduct under the same facts. In the NBA, it is a conduct clause with no enumerated definition, applied at discretion the same afternoon.
What each of these mechanisms shares is this: they do not require the conviction to be just. They require it to be final. And they require the person watching to calculate whether speaking is worth what it will cost.
Father Benedict Kiely wrote after the ruling: "Räsänen is the canary in the coal mine for freedom of expression and religious freedom in Europe. And now the canary — and the Bible — have been found guilty."
Räsänen's response to the conviction was not what the process was designed to produce. She said: "I stand by the teachings of my Christian faith and will continue to defend my and every person's right to share their convictions in the public square." She is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
On Good Friday, the cross stands as the answer to the question every person of conviction will eventually face: is what you carry worth the cost of carrying it?
The crowd on that first Good Friday calculated that it was not. The institution required silence. Most of those who had followed Jesus to Jerusalem agreed — not by saying so, but by disappearing.
The ones who stayed were the ones who had decided, before the moment came, that the truth was worth more than their safety.
Räsänen decided that. Bonhoeffer decided that. Ivey is deciding it now, however imperfectly.
The question Good Friday asks every person reading this is the same one it has always asked: what will you do when your moment comes?
Learn more about The Guardians' Cross → theguardianscross.org
