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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”