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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”