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

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also 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”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered 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 have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”