Religion: Skirts & Sacraments

In Stockholm's Great Church, lights blazed and television cameras blinked one day last week as Lutheran Bishop Helge Ljungberg solemnly placed an alb and gold-embroidered chasuble over the shoulders of a brand-new minister in Sweden's Lutheran state church. The minister: Elisabeth Durle, 30, who studied pharmacology before she switched to theology, plans to be a suburban curate. Also ordained elsewhere on the same day: Ingrid Persson, 48, who passed her theological exams in 1936 and has been a deaconess since 1949; Margit Sahlin, 46, who is already a member of the Central Committee...

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