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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in 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, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute 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+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”