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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time 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 apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”