Lutheran pastor to speak openly of her homosexuality

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Laura Mäntyoja, a Lutheran pastor at the Korso congregation in Vantaa is to tell about her homosexuality in public - apparently making her the first minister of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church to do so.
      Mäntylä is a guest on the Inhimillinen tekijä (“The Human Factor”) interview series on TV2 of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). The programme is to be aired on Wednesday next week.
      “I feel that God accepts me, but am I acceptable to people?” Mäntylä asks in the programme.
      The 34-year-old Mäntylä works in Korso as a youth and confirmation school pastor. She is currently on a study leave.
     
Mäntylä did not want to comment further on her coming out on Tuesday.
     “I hope that people will watch the programme”, Laura Mäntylä says.
     
The news of Mäntylä’s homosexuality did not come as a surprise to Vicar Kari Pekka Kinnunen of Korso Parish.
     “The fact that she decided to speak about it in public is a very courageous act. I hope that it would be seen as a completely normal fact, but it will probably raise a good deal of discussion”, Kinnunen says.
     He also reiterated that Mäntylä’s coming out is not an impediment to her working as a parish pastor.
     “I feel that it is self -evident that a homosexual person has the same possibilities to work in a congregation as anyone else”, Kinnunen says.
     
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church does not have a clear policy on what kind of an attitude to take toward homosexuality and family life involving couples of the same gender.
     In a memorandum issued at a meeting Finland’s Lutheran bishops, a working group concluded that being part of a same sex civil union is not an impediment to working in the church.
     “The memo gives the green light, and I do not believe that this will be a big question for the church, especially in the Helsinki region”, says Raija Sollamo, Professor Emerita at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki.
     
Sollamo says that the Mäntylä case is unique in the Finnish church.
     She does not remember that a minister of the Finnish church would ever have spoken as openly about being homosexual.
     “The public image has been seen as one in which there are no homosexuals working in the church, even though this is not true, and the bishops know it too. Homosexuality is something that has been silenced in the church”, Sollamo says.
      Eero Huovinen, the Bishop of Helsinki, did not want to comment on the case on Tuesday.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Transgender Lutheran vicar wants to continue his pastoral work (12.11.2008)

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