“A durable society worthy of free women and men, corresponding to God’s will for humanity, cannot be built simply on claims to possession. For a society to thrive, individuals within it must first become a people, bound together by a covenant of justice consonant with natural and divinely inspired law”. This is a passage from the letter that the nine Bishops of the Nordic countries, incumbent and emeritus, together with the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference wrote for the opening of the Jubilee Year and published for the beginning of Advent in several languages. “We are all, like Abraham, our father in faith, strangers and aliens in the land”, the Bishops wrote. Citing from the book of Leviticus, they explain the meaning of the Jubilee Year, focussing on our relationships with the earth, with goods and with others, and make it relevant for us today. On the subject of dominant relations, “the ideal put before us by the Bible is not upheld in the world we inhabit”, the Bishops wrote, citing human trafficking, indebted nations, incitement to addiction (drugs, games, pornography, alcohol), as well as the erosion of the rights of the unborn. “The further” faith “recedes from public life, the more humanity is under threat”. The Bishops pray that the Jubilee Year “may see an effective, cordial, and intelligent deepening of faith in our countries”.