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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, 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.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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 by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its belief 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, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”