Bernt Ivar Eidsvig
Bernt Ivar Eidsvig, known 1991-2005 as Markus Bernt Eidsvig, is a Norwegian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the Bishop of Oslo from 2005 to 2025 and the Apostolic Administrator of the Roman Catholic Territorial Prelature of Trondheim from 2009 until 2019.
Early life
Eidsvig was born and raised in Rjukan, Norway. He studied theology at the University of Oslo and planned to become a priest of the Norwegian Church. He took a theological degree at Oslo. He worked for ten years as a freelancer for the newspaper Morgenbladet. He converted to Catholicism on 20 December 1977.Arrest and imprisonment in Moscow
On 14 July 1976, Eidsvig was arrested by the KGB in Moscow while he was acting as a courier for the exiled Russian organization National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. His mission was to deliver leaflets, renal medicine, and a handbook of "rebellion" to a Soviet Russian in Moscow who had requested these supplies. The intended recipient had been betrayed and arrested. When he arrived to make the delivery he was arrested by agents of the KGB and was held in Lefortovo Prison for 101 days, when Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Frydenlund and Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli negotiated his release.Clerical career
After completing licentiate studies at Heythrop College in London, Eidsvig was ordained as a priest of Oslo Catholic Diocese of St. Olav's Cathedral in Oslo on 20 June 1982 by John Willem Gran, Bishop of Oslo. He served for a time in the military chaplain corps of the Norwegian Armed Forces, partly at Evjemoen north of Kristiansand and partly with the medic recruits' company in Bømoen near Voss. He then served as chaplain at St. Paul's in Bergen and on 1 January 1986 became pastor there. He moved and expanded the Catholic school St. Paul Bergen. He was also a teacher at the school and active in the language association Riksmålsforbundet. In the Catholic Diocese of Oslo, he served on the Priests' Council from 1983 to 1990, the Consultors' Council from 1987 to 1990, and the Pastoral Council from 1988 to 1991.In the summer of 1991, Eidsvig was received as a novice by the Canons of Stift Klosterneuburg in Austria, just outside Vienna. He was invested with the religious habit on 27 August 1991, and received the name Mark. He made his profession of vows on 30 August 1995. He then worked from 1997 to 2003 as pastor of St. Leopold's Church in Klosterneuburg, and from 1996 at the monastery as master of novices. Under his leadership of the novitiate, the Stift Klosterneuburg took on a more international flavor, welcoming candidates from the United States, Germany, Norway, and Vietnam, the last by way of Norway as refugees. He has also been chapter counselor and chapter secretary of the Stift.
Bishop
appointed Eidsvig Bishop of Oslo on 11 July 2005. The announcement was delayed to the symbolic date of 29 July, the memorial day of Norway's patron saint, St. Olav. Eidsvig was the first Canon of Klosterneuburg to be appointed bishop since 1913, when the monastery Pastor Friedrich Gustav Piffl was appointed Archbishop of Vienna. On 22 October 2005, he received his episcopal consecration in the Lutheran Trinity Church, opened to the Catholic community by the Norwegian Church for the occasion, and then was installed in St. Olav Cathedral. The consecration mass was broadcast on the Internet via www.katolsk.no. Eidsvig is the third Norwegian-born Catholic bishop in Norway since the Reformation, after Olaf Offerdahl and John Willem Gran.Eidsvig was named Apostolic Administrator of the Territorial Prelature of Trondheim on 8 June 2009, upon the resignation of Bishop Georg Müller, who had left office as the result of child sex abuse charges. His term as Apostolic Administrator ended on 3 October 2020 with the consecration of the new Bishop–Prelate of Trondheim.
On 16 July 2025, Pope Leo XIV accepted Eidsvig's resignation as the Bishop of Oslo, he was succeeded by the Coadjutor Bishop of Oslo, Fredrik Hansen.