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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”