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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”