Lars Henrik Sigfrid Svenungsson (30 May 1933 - 6 December 2017) was a Swedish prelate of the

Church of Sweden The Church of Sweden () is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.5 million members at year end 2023, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest List ...

who was Bishop of Stockholm between 1988 and 1998 and later chaplain of the Royal Household from 1997 till 2007.

Biography

Svenungsson was born on 30 May 1933 in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, the son of governor Gunnar Svenungsson. He was ordained priest on 20 December 1959 in

Kalmar Kalmar (, , ) is a city in the southeast of Sweden, situated by the Baltic Sea. It had 41,388 inhabitants in 2020 and is the seat of Kalmar Municipality. It is also the capital of Kalmar County, which comprises 12 municipalities with a total of ...

. Throughout his priestly work, he worked for ecumenism and international cooperation. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Svenungsson had been involved in the ecumenical work in Europe, including in the European Church Conference where he has been a member of the Central Committee for some time. In 2003, he received the Luminosa Award for Unity for his long-standing pioneering work from the international

Focolare Movement The Focolare Movement is an international organisation of spiritual and social renewal and Christian new religious movement that promotes the ideals of unity and universal brother/sisterhood grounded in the Golden Rule. It was founded by then e ...

to create and maintain a good ecumenical dialogue between representatives of different Christian church traditions. He was elected Bishop of Stockholm in 1988 and was consecrated by Archbishop Bertil Werkström of Uppsala on 9 October 1988. He retained the post till 1998. A year before his retirement he was appointed Chaplain of the Swedish Royal Household. In 1999 he was awarded the H. M. The King's Medal."Henrik Svenungsson"
, ''Swedish Royal Court'', Stockholm, 1999. Retrieved on 18 May 2019.

References

1933 births 2017 deaths 20th-century Swedish Lutheran bishops Lutheran bishops of Stockholm People from Gothenburg {{Sweden-Lutheran-bishop-stub