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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting 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, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops 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 during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”