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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

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

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”