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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

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 by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”