Ēriks Mesters (20 December 1926 – 8 November 2009) was a Latvian theologian and archbishop of the

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (, or LELB) is a Lutheranism, Lutheran Protestant church in Latvia. Latvia's Lutheran heritage dates back to the Protestant Reformation, Reformation. Both the Nazi and communist regimes persecuted the c ...

and Archbishop of Riga from 1986 to 1989.

Biography

Ēriks Mesters was a soldier of the Red Army during WWII. Between 1956 and 1959 he worked as a consultant for the National Economic Council of the

Latvian SSR The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (Also known as the Latvian SSR, or Latvia) was a Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republic of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1941, and then from 1944 until 1990. The Soviet occupation of the Bal ...

. From 1960 to 1967 he studied theology at the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia in

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

. On 8 June 1969 he was ordained a priest in Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Riga, to which he had been a vicar since 1968. From 1969 to 1986 he was pastor of Holy Trinity Church and from 1972 to 1986 also of the parish of Dalbe. From 1980 he was a member of the Consistory of the Latvian Church. Mesters was elected archbishop of Riga on 15 April 1986 during the extraordinary synod of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church. He thus succeeded Jānis Matulis, who died in August 1985. On 24 August he was consecrated by

Olof Sundby Olof Sundby (6 December 1917 – 6 December 1996) was a Swedish bishop within the Church of Sweden. He was the archbishop of Uppsala in the period 1972–1983. Biography Carl Olof Werner Sundby was born at Karlskoga in Örebro County, Sweden. ...

Archbishop emeritus of

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

in St. Gertrude New Church, Riga. From 1986 to 1989, Mesters taught ethics at the theological seminary in Riga. Ēriks Mesters was known as a supporter of the existing Soviet order. In the turbulent eighties in the Baltic states, when young people from the three countries in particular called for independence, Mesters supported the Soviet government. Within the Consistory (administration) of the Latvian Church his attitude was not undisputed and this probably led to his retirement in 1989. In 2005 a book about the history of the Latvian Church was published. In the years before he wrote some biographies of Lutheran archbishops. Mesters died at the age of 82 on 8 November 2009 in

."Sēru vēsts. +Ēriks Mesters, arhibīskaps emeritus"
''

'', Riga. Retrieved on 17 December 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mesters, Eriks 1926 births 2009 deaths People from Jelgava Latvian Lutheran bishops Latvian Lutheran clergy Lutheran archbishops of Riga 20th-century Lutheran archbishops