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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During 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 permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”