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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church 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 every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”