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Amid crimson theater drapes 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.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals 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 during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”