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Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those 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 offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community 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 toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, 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 celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”