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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”