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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths 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 no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”