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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 caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, 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 honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”