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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”