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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent 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 confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”