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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent 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 reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”