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Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”