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Against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch 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 delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”