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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons 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 by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”