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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

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

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”