The
Lutheran Reformation in Norway lasted from 1526 to 1537. Catholic Church property and the personal property of Catholic priests were confiscated by the Crown. Catholic priests were exiled and imprisoned unless they submitted to conversion to the
Danish king's
faith. Bishop Jon Arason of Holar, executed in 1550, was the last Catholic bishop of Iceland (until the establishment of the
Diocese of Reykjavik in 1923). The
Bishop of Hamar from 1513 to 1537,
Mogens Lauritssøn, was imprisoned until his death in 1542. Many traditions from the Catholic Middle Ages continued for centuries more. In the late 18th century and into the 19th century, a strict and puritan interpretation of the Lutheran faith, inspired by the preacher
Hans Nielsen Hauge, spread through Norway, and popular religious practices turned more purely Lutheran. The Catholic Church
per se, however, was not allowed to operate in Norway between 1537 and 1843, and throughout most of this period, Catholic priests faced execution. In 1582, the scattered Catholics in Norway and elsewhere in Northern Europe were placed under the jurisdiction of a
papal nuncio in
Cologne, however, with threatening punishment Catholic pastoring could not materialise. In the late 16th century, a few incidents of
crypto-Catholicism occurred within the Lutheran
Church of Norway. However, these were isolated incidents. The
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, on its establishment in 1622, took charge of the vast Northern European missionary field, which – at its third session – it divided among the
nuncio of
Brussels (for the Catholics in Denmark and Norway), the
nuncio at Cologne (much of Northern Germany) and the
nuncio to Poland (Finland, Mecklenburg, and Sweden). In 1688, Norway became part of the
Apostolic Vicariate of the Nordic Missions. The
Paderborn bishops functioned as administrators of the apostolic
vicariate.
Christiania (
Oslo) had an illegal but tolerated Catholic congregation in the 1790s. In 1834, the Catholic missions in Norway became part of the
Apostolic Vicariate of Sweden, seated in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. In 1843, the Norwegian Parliament passed a religious tolerance act providing for limited religious freedom and allowing for legal non-Lutheran public religious services for the first time since the
Reformation. ==Since legalisation in 1843==