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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

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

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”