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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”