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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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 Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, 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 divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”