Please read the following introduction before you listen:

 

On the morning of the 13th of December 2012, half a million Swedes turned on their TVs to follow the celebration of Saint Lucia’s Day, a local Christmas ceremony regarded as a ray of light in the dark Swedish winter. That year, the honour of playing Saint Lucia herself was given to Astrid Cederlöf, a 14-year-old girl adopted from India.

The reactions to the Saint being played by a dark-skinned girl were immediate – social media was soon boiling over with racist remarks about a Swedish tradition being destroyed forever.

‘The Black Saint’ follows how Astrid Cederlöf’s life gets turned upside down by thousands of hateful comments – most of which came from supporters of the Sweden Democrats, the right-wing populist party that in the 2014 General Election became Sweden’s third biggest political party. The program also portrays two of the people who anonymously offended the young schoolgirl, in a country increasingly plagued by intolerance and racism.

Author Måns Mosesson

Producer Robert Barkman 

Broadcaster Sveriges Radio

Translation Urtė Liepuoniūtė

Subtitles Adomas Zubė

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Sponsored by Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania