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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”