[6] The Orthodox Church of Finland is divided into three dioceses (hiippakunta), each with a subdivision of parishes (seurakunta).

In contrast, similar legal oversight of private religious communities is pursued by the district courts.

A bishop, priest or deacon of the church may not divulge information he has heard during confession or spiritual care.

However, if the priest hears about a crime that is about to be committed, he is responsible for informing the authorities in such manner that privilege is not endangered.

Characteristic to the diocese is the large number of members who have recently immigrated to Finland, especially in the Helsinki parish where several churches also officiate at the service in foreign languages, including Russian, English, Greek and Romanian.

Traditionally, the Skolts, now a small minority of only 300 speakers, have been the earliest Orthodox Christians in the Finnish Lapland.

[12] The Diocese of Oulu was founded as part of Archbishop Paul's (Olmari) plan to make the Finnish Orthodox Church autocephalous.

The only Orthodox Christian monastery in Finland, New Valamo (Valamon luostari), is situated in Heinävesi.

Both were established during World War II when residents of the Karelian and Petsamo monasteries were evacuated from areas ceded to the Soviet Union.

Built in the architectural style of Neoclassicism with some Byzantine-style elements, the exterior was designed in the form of a round-domed temple, while the interior is cruciform.

After the Second World War, Finland had to cede land to the Soviet Union under Paris Peace Treaties.

Most reconstruction era churches and chapels are designed by Ilmari Ahonen and Toivo Paatela.

Some of the earliest excavated crosses in Finland, dating from the 12th century onward, are similar to a type found in Novgorod and Kyiv.

[24] Orthodox parishes are believed to have existed as far to the west as Tavastia, the area inhabited by Tavastians in Central Finland.

Some core concepts of the Christian vocabulary in the Finnish language are supposed to be loans from early Russian, which in turn has borrowed them from Mediaeval Greek.

[25] In the middle of the 13th century the inevitable clash between the two expanding countries, Sweden and Novgorod, and the two forms of Christianity they represented, took place.

Often around the hermit's hut or skete, there settled other fighters of the good fight of faith, and so a new monastery was founded.

[30] The Swedish state encouraged Lutheran Finns to occupy the deserted farms in Karelia.

Sweden lost all its provinces in the Baltic region, and a portion of eastern Finland to Russia.

The Orthodox population of Eastern Finland again had access to making pilgrimages to the monasteries of Solovetsk and Alexander-Svirsky.

[34] The Old Believers, a schismatic group of Russians who did not accept the religious reforms of patriarch Nikon in 1666–67, were excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and fled to the outskirts of Russia.

[33] When all of Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire in 1809, it already had an established Lutheran Church.

In the rural countryside of Karelia, the local form of Orthodox faith remained somewhat primitive, incorporating many features of older religious praxis.

[38] A separate Finnish episcopate with a leading archbishop was established in 1892 under the Russian Orthodox Church.

When Russia at the end of the 19th century tried to retract the autonomy of Finland, the Lutheran Finns started to associate the Orthodox Church with the imperial Russian rule, labeled as the ryssän kirkko.

Other reforms introduced after independence include changing the language of the liturgy from Church Slavonic to Finnish and the transfer of the Archiepiscopal seat from Viipuri to Sortavala.

Until World War II, the majority of Orthodox Christians in Finland were located in Karelia.

As a consequence of the war, residents of the areas ceded to the Soviet Union were evacuated to other parts of the country.

But quite unexpectedly a "romantic" movement arose in Finland beginning in the 1970s onward glorifying Orthodoxy, its "mystical" and visually beautiful services and icons (religious paintings) and its deeper view of Christianity than that of the Lutheran Church.

For these reasons, similar to Catholicism in England, conversion to the Orthodox Church became almost a fad, and its membership started to grow.