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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing 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 not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”