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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”