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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity 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 permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”