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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”