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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”