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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”