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Against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

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

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”