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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years 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, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”