Denmark: mandatory same-sex marriage ceremonies don’t apply to non-Lutheran churches

June 11, 2012

Denmark’s minister for ecclesiastical affairs has assured the head of the nation’s sole Catholic diocese that the new law requiring churches to solemnize same-sex marriages will apply only to the official Lutheran church.

“One never knows,” cautions Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen. “Indeed there have been voices who suggested this law should be obligatory for everybody.”

The law permits individual ministers to refuse to conduct same-sex marriages, which have been legal in Denmark since 1997.

0.6% of the nation’s 5.5 million people are Catholic, according to Vatican statistics.

 

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Further information:

• Denmark legislates same-sex Church marriages (Fides)
• Denmark requires churches to solemnize same-sex weddings (CWN, 6/7)