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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. 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 killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay 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 from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”