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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”