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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”