Philippe Jean-Charles Jourdan (born 30 August 1960) is a
French-born
Estonian Catholic prelate who has served as the first
Bishop of Tallinn since 2024, after serving as Apostolic Administrator of Estonia from 2005 to 2024. He has lived and worked in
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
since 1996 and became an Estonian citizen in 2005.
Biography
Philippe Jourdan was born in
Dax
The DAX (''Deutscher Aktienindex'' (German stock index); ) is a stock market index consisting of the 40 major German blue chip companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It is a total return index. Prices are taken from the Xetra t ...
, France, on 30 August 1960.
[ His family is of ]Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
origin. He was the oldest of three boys; one brother is a priest. He completed his secondary education in Dax and took preparatory classes at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on Rue Saint-Jacques (Paris), rue Saint-Jacques in central Par ...
in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
.[ He joined ]Opus Dei
is an institution of the Catholic Church that was founded in Spain in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá. Its stated mission is to help its lay and clerical members seek holiness in their everyday occupations and societies. Opus Dei is officially r ...
in 1980,[ while studying at the ]École nationale des ponts et chaussées
École nationale des ponts et chaussées (; ; abbr. ENPC), also nicknamed Ponts (), formerly known as École des Ponts ParisTech (), is a grande école in the field of science, engineering and technology, of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, a ...
in Paris, where he completed an engineering degree in 1983.[ After working briefly in energy conservation]Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (, ) is a Roman Catholic university under the Curial Congregation for Catholic Education, now entrusted to the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, or more commonly called Opus Dei. It was started i ...
in 1987. He was ordained a priest of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law on 20 August 1988.[
In 1996, he took up an assignment in Estonia, where his knowledge of Russian and English, which are widely spoken there, made him an attractive candidate.][ He was appointed ]vicar general
A vicar general (previously, archdeacon) is the principal deputy of the bishop or archbishop of a diocese or an archdiocese for the exercise of administrative authority and possesses the title of local ordinary. As vicar of the bishop, the vica ...
of the Apostolic Administration of Estonia,[ then the highest resident Church official in the country, as the apostolic administrator was Archbishop Justo Mullor García, who held several appointments as nuncio, including nuncio to Estonia, but lived in Lithuania. From 1999 to 2001 Jourdan served also as a parochial vicar of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in ]Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...
.[
On 23 March 2005, he was appointed ]titular bishop
A titular bishop in various churches is a bishop who is not in charge of a diocese.
By definition, a bishop is an "overseer" of a community of the faithful, so when a priest is ordained a bishop, the tradition of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox an ...
of Pertusa and Apostolic Administrator of Estonia by Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005.
In his you ...
,Protestant Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...
in the 16th century.[
He received his episcopal consecration in Tallinn on 10 September 2005 from Archbishop Peter Stephan Zurbriggen, Apostolic Nuncio to the ]Baltic states
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern co ...
. Archbishop Tadevuš Kandrusievič
Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz (; born 3 January 1946) is a Belarusians, Belarusian prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev, Archbishop of Minsk–Mohilev from 2007 to 2021. He has been a bishop since 1989, ...
of Moscow and Bishop Javier Echevarría, prelate of Opus Dei, were the co-consecrators.[ Because the Catholic community has no church of sufficient size, the ceremony took place in the Church of St. Olaf, loaned by the local Baptist church for the occasion, and acknowledged by Jourdan as a gesture of ecumenical solidarity typical of Estonia's Christian communities.][ and a bishop delegate to the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) since 2010.][
In 2019, when Jourdan was asked how the Church should respond to secularization, which is more advanced in Estonia than elsewhere in Europe, he said:
On 26 September 2024, he was appointed the first bishop of the Diocese of Tallinn, as the Apostolic Administration of Estonia was raised from an apostolic administration to a diocese.
He became an Estonian citizen on 22 December 2005,][ giving up his French citizenship.]Order of the White Star
The Order of the White Star (; ) was instituted in 1936. The Order of the White Star is bestowed on Estonian citizens and foreigners to give recognition for services rendered to the Estonian state.
Design
Classes
The Order of the White Star ...
Third Class on 22 February 2006. On 5 October 2008, the council of the Lutheran Cathedral of St. Mary in Tallinn presented Jourdan with its annual Mary Medal in recognition of his ecumenical activities and promotion of Christian values at conferences and in the press. On 2 February 2021, the Ministry of the Interior awarded him its silver medal for his work on behalf of Church-state relations and for fostering ecumenical cooperation through the Estonian Council of Churches.
See also
* Catholicism in Estonia
Notes
References
;Further reading
*
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jourdan, Philippe Jean-Charles
1960 births
People from Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Living people
Opus Dei members
20th-century French Roman Catholic priests
21st-century Roman Catholic bishops in Estonia
French expatriates in Estonia
Naturalised citizens of Estonia
Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 3rd Class