Oslo - Norway's Church Affairs Minister has ratified the appointment of the first openly gay priest in the state-supported Lutheran Church of Norway, despite protests from his diocese in Oslo.
The church council of the fashionable Oslo district of Majorstua nominated the Rev Jens Torstein Olsen (51), who is living with another man, as a curate last month. But seven bishops appealed against the nomination to the Ministry of Church Affairs, and demanded that the Lutheran Church hold a crisis meeting to examine the nomination.