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Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”