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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years 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, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance 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.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”