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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, 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 wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”