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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during 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, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community 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. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period 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 arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”