The first Polish Lutheran woman bishop has been ordained to serve British Lutherans The Rt. Rev. Paulina Hlawiczka-Trotman was consecrated bishop of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain (LCiGB) at St Mary’s Church in Nottingham on 20 Jan 2024 in an English/Polish language service.
Bishop Hlawiczka-Trotman studied theology and ethics at the Christian Academy of Theology in Warsaw and was ordained a Lutheran pastor in England in 2014 because at that time the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland did not ordain woman. In 2021 the Polish Lutheran Church ordained its first female clergy.
“Paulina is illustrating the very history of our church,” said her predecessor as bishop of LCiGB, the Rt. Rev. Tor Jørgensen told the Notes from Poland newsletter.
“She is coming from an East-European Lutheran minority tradition. She has shown individual courage and integrity by following her call to be an ordained minister while that still was not possible in her own church.”
On X, formerly known as twitter, the primate of the Polish Lutheran Church, the Rt. Rev. Jerzy Samiec, called the service “historic, wonderful and solemn”, and had brought “great joy” to Polish Lutherans.
The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, has around 60,000 members in 133 parishes with almost 200 clergy. Before the Second World War the Polish Lutheran Church numbered over a half million, but following the expulsion of Germans from pre-war Polish territories in 1945, the church shrank.
