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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 hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

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

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of 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 at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described 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”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”