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

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

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

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”