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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”