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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 harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people 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 first in Scandinavia 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 marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing 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 did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”