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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”