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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.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie 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 painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”