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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”