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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives 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 in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people 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 during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”