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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited varied responses. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”