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Against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred 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 citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”