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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. 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.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation 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 church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”