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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”