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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, 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 history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”