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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”