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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 harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in the view 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 offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”