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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”