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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community 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 that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”