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Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier 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” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”