Princess Madeleine of Sweden spoke at the SWEA Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, her place of residence since 2018.
On Friday, 29 April, the Swedish Princess sat down with Maria Thorsson, the mobile pastor of the Church of Sweden for North America, to talk about the possible responses to people’s challenges during times of crisis and war.
Maria Thorsson currently resides in Toronto, Canada, and tends to the needs of the community of the Church of Sweden throughout all of North America; nowadays, the church is working in close cooperation with Swedish authorities to also respond to the coronavirus crisis and the war in Ukraine.
The Princess was invited to talk about her experience as a Swedish expatriate, now that she has been far away from home for several years and has had to live through the distance in some tough times, including some of her family members getting sick with COVID.
SWEA (Swedish Women Educational Association) is a non-profit organisation that supports the promotion of Swedish culture abroad through women’s work. They hand out roughly 250.000 USD every year in scholarships to achieve this aim, as well as host an annual conference in one of the 30 countries around the world where the association is active.
SWEA was founded in Los Angeles in 1979 by Agneta Nilsson and has since then become one of the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs’ most valuable tools for communicating with the Swedish population abroad.
Since 2018, Princess Madeleine and her children have been among those numbers, as Her Royal Highness relocated to Florida to be closer to her husband’s job opportunities. The Princess had lived in the United States before, and, in fact, she met her husband and birthed their first child in New York City.
The family used to go back to Sweden regularly, but now that travel restrictions have been put in place to cut down on the intercontinental spread of the virus, the Princess has stated on various occasions how the distance felt even greater, knowing that she could not be with her family as she pleased.
