Warning: Illegal string offset 'itemurl' in /home/lutheran/www/www/admin/global_functions.inc on line 257
Lionel Ketola Is Ordained!
Abstract: Twenty years after being denied candidacy, Lionel Ketola is ordained to serve at Holy Cross Lutheran in Ontario.
On Friday evening, May 16, about 400 people including roughly 40 vested clergy, participated in a rite of ordination to confer the office of minister of Word and Sacrament upon Lionel Ketola. Pr. Ketola has been called to serve Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Newmarket, Ontario. Because Pr. Ketola is a gay man and because the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) denies ordination to "self-professed practising homosexuals", the ordination was performed extra ordinem. Pr. Ketola is the fourteenth person since 1990 to be ordained extra ordinem to the Lutheran ministry. He is the first to be ordained in the ELCIC.
Pr. Ketola was first endorsed for ministry in 1986 and was admitted to Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. He was removed from candidacy in 1988 because he acknowledged being a gay man in a relationship. He received the M.Div. degree in 1990. He was approved for candidacy by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) in 2004.
