Malmö Seafarers Chaplaincy

14/10/2026

🛳️ Refused shore leave because of your passport?

Under the IMO’s FAL Convention, your nationality alone is no reason to refuse you shore leave.

✅ If you are refused, you can ask for the reasons in writing.

At the ICMA Northern Europe meeting in Helsinki, chaplains and ship visitors talked about how they stand up for that, and what they do when the gate stays shut, the ship is seized, or the smile hides too much.

📖 JP Heath, seafarers’ chaplain in Malmö, wrote up what was said: the German Federal Police refusing Russian seafarers shore leave, a seized vessel outside Trelleborg, and a company policy that still keeps chaplains off its ships.

Under the IMO's FAL Convention, your nationality alone is no reason to refuse you shore leave. In Helsinki, chaplains and ship visitors from across Northern Europe shared how we stand up for that, and what we do when the gate stays shut, the ship is seized, or the smile hides too much.

11/10/2026

We don’t have to be afraid of being humans.” — Bishop Bo-Göran Åstrand, Diocese of Porvoo

Preached at Evening Prayer in Temppeliaukio Church, Helsinki, during the ICMA Northern Europe meeting, World Maritime Day 2026.

“If we were made of steel, maybe we would be afraid, but not because we are humans.” The sermon asks what we hide behind polished surfaces, and what we need instead: “words that tell the truth about life and about who we are.” Its answer is “small, everyday acts of kindness”: a seafarer met, listened to, helped, prayed with.

10/10/2026

In one region of Germany, the Federal Police said Russian seafarers would no longer get shore leave because of their passport.

Matthias Ristau, General Secretary of the German Seafarers’ Mission, answered with the FAL Convention: “It’s not allowed to discriminate seafarers just by the passport.” Shore leave can be refused for concrete security reasons for a person or a ship, but not just because of a passport. The police did not like it, but they accepted it.

Recorded at the ICMA Northern Europe meeting in Helsinki on World Maritime Day 2026.

Tag: Deutsche Seemannsmission Hamburg-Altona e.V.

27/02/2026

It is with great joy that I can say that I have now been trained in Seafarer’s Welfare and Maritime Ministry!