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Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”