Background
Arborelius was born in Sorengo, Switzerland, of Swedish parents, and grew up in Lund in southern Sweden.
Arborelius was born in Sorengo, Switzerland, of Swedish parents, and grew up in Lund in southern Sweden.
He studied in Bruges and Rome and was ordained a priest in 1979.
On 17 November 1998, Pope John Paul II appointed Arborelius of Stockholm and he was consecrated on 29 December 1998 by Hubert Brandenburg. When he succeeded Brandenburg as the Roman Catholic of Stockholm (currently the only Roman Catholic diocese in Sweden and covering the entire country) in 1998, he became the first ethnic Swede and second Scandinavian Roman Catholic bishop since the Reformation. (Most Roman Catholics in Scandinavia since the Reformation, particularly among the clergy, have been immigrants or of immigrant descent such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Italian) Arborelius takes part in the documentary The Indian Priest about Indian missionary priest Raphael Curian from 2015.