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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

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

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”