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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

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

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”