Iceland is examining Catholic Church remarks on homosexuality after comments by the chancellor of the Catholic Church in Iceland triggered political backlash, a police review and a new government request for an assessment of conversion practices. The case has renewed scrutiny of how religious guidance intersects with Iceland’s 2023 ban on coercive conversion therapy.
What the Catholic Church’s chancellor said about homosexuality
The controversy followed remarks by Father Jakob Rolland, Chancellor of the Catholic Church in Iceland, in an interview with the RÚV podcast Meining. Rolland said people with same-sex attraction were welcome in the Church, but only if they did not pursue a same-sex relationship. He also said the Church hoped some people would leave what he described as that way of life, and argued that those seeking such help often could not find support from psychologists or social workers.
Rolland rejected the idea that the Church provides medical treatment. Instead, he described the Church’s approach as moral and spiritual guidance, rooted in prayer, confession, parish life and conversations with priests or religious staff. Critics, however, say that when the purpose is to suppress or change a person’s sexual orientation, the distinction between spiritual care and conversion practices becomes difficult to sustain.
Police review puts Iceland’s conversion therapy ban back in focus
The Metropolitan Police said it would review Rolland’s comments and assess whether there are grounds to open an inquiry. At the same time, Justice Minister Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir asked the Equal Rights Office to examine the scale of conversion practices in Iceland, reviving a follow-up measure that parliament had called for when the law was adopted.
Iceland banned coercive conversion therapy in 2023. The law covers attempts to make someone undergo unscientific treatment aimed at suppressing or changing sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression through coercion, deception or threats. That legal threshold matters in the current case. The key question is not only whether Church teaching is discriminatory, but whether any concrete practices linked to it could fall within the scope of the criminal ban.
Political reaction widens beyond one church official
The political response extended beyond the police review. Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, who has said she is herself Catholic, publicly criticised the rhetoric and said describing homosexuality as something to be fixed or changed was both harmful and dangerous. She argued that such language could amount to encouragement of repression and recalled that these practices were banned because they violate personal freedom and human rights.
The debate has also broadened beyond the Catholic Church. Legal and political voices in Iceland have argued that the issue should not be treated as a single-church controversy, but as a wider question about whether any religious communities operating in the country encourage people to deny or suppress their sexual orientation under the language of counselling, prayer or moral discipline.
Iceland’s national church has taken a more inclusive path
The debate is also shaped by the fact that the Church of Iceland, the country’s national Lutheran church, has taken a markedly more open approach to LGBTQ+ people. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Iceland since 2010, and in 2015 the Church of Iceland voted to allow same-sex couples to marry in its churches.
More recently, Bishop Guðrún Karls Helgudóttir said the church had failed LGBTQ+ people in the past and should have embraced diversity earlier. That does not mean all religious communities in Iceland share the same theology, but it underlines that the current controversy is not simply about religion in general. It is also about sharply different Christian responses to sexual orientation in one of Europe’s most LGBTQ+-friendly societies.
A wider Iceland debate on faith, LGBTQ+ rights and pastoral guidance
The case is sensitive because Iceland is widely seen as one of Europe’s strongest countries on LGBTQ+ rights, while the Catholic Church maintains doctrine that distinguishes between same-sex attraction and same-sex relationships. That doctrinal position is not new. What has changed is the legal and political context around any attempt to encourage people to suppress their sexuality.
For now, there is no indication that police have opened a full criminal investigation or that charges are imminent. But the review marks an important test of Iceland’s post-2023 framework. It may help clarify how far religious organisations can go in offering pastoral guidance before that guidance is seen as part of a prohibited conversion practice.
The outcome could matter beyond Iceland. Across Europe, lawmakers and rights groups are still debating how to regulate conversion practices, especially when they are framed as voluntary religious counselling rather than formal therapy. In that sense, the Icelandic case sits at the intersection of freedom of religion, criminal law and the protection of LGBTQ+ people from harmful forms of repression.
