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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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 during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”