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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”