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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, 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.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, 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 issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”