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Set against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”