Norway fines Catholic church for inflating membership to receive government funding

The Norwegian Catholic church has been fined for magnifying the number of its members in order to receive more state funding.

The Diocese of Oslo, which was in charge of keeping records of Catholics living in Norway, was ordered by prosecutors to pay the fine of 1 million kroner (about $142,000), AFP reported.

It was alleged that the diocese went through telephone directories to look for immigrants with names that suggested that they came from Catholic countries and added them to the list of members between 2011 and 2014.

In Norway, which is predominantly Protestant, various religious minorities receive state funding in accordance with the number of church members.

The diocese was able to obtain more government subsidies by inflating its membership figures, according to the prosecution. Thuan cong Pham, the chief administrative officer of the diocese, has been charged with aggravated fraud.

"We've never done anything illegal or received too much money," the Church said in a statement.

"We have always recognised that we have made mistakes and had an unfortunate practice in parts of our registration. This was cleaned up a long [time] ago," it added.

The Church argued that there has been a surge immigration from Catholic countries, such as Poland, beginning in 2004. The immigrants were not registered, which led to an increase in church spending without a corresponding increase in government support.

The state also ordered the Church the repay the amount of 40.6 million kroner ($4.4 million).

Statistics Norway reported that there has been a 42 percent increase in the number of Catholics in the country since 2012, according to Crux. It was noted that the Norwegian Catholic church had about 145,000 members this year.

The Church recently opened the St. Olav Cathedral in Trondheim to accommodate the growing Catholic community.

"It had become too small, since the number of people attending the Catholic Church in Trøndelag and Norway is growing rapidly; with an annual growth of 15 percent in recent years," said Bishop Bernt Eidsvig of the Oslo diocese.

The increase has been attributed to immigration from Eastern European and Asian countries, including the Philippines. It was estimated that about 30,000 Filipinos are currently living in the Scandinavian country, and another 35,000 are employed in Norwegian-owned or operated ships, or in shipyards.