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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”