Canadian Church to Ordain Gays

TORONTO — Leaders of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, decided today that homosexuals can be ordained to the ministry.

The vote by the church’s general council was 205 to 160 and followed months of heated debate in which one-fourth of the church’s 4,000 ministers and 30,000 of its 860,000 members signed a declaration opposing the ordination of homosexuals. The action was expected to lead to resignations and a possible schism in the United Church, which was founded in 1925 as a union of the Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations in Canada.