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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated 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 certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end 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 statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”