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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”