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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people 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, was sentenced to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

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 LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing 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 celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”