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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 discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, 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, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons 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 in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”