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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. 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 allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church 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.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”