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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders 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 allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”