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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”