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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”