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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”