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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. 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 prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”