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

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, 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, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” 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”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, 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 “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”