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Against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”