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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious 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 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”