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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely 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 Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We have failed to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”