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Against red stage curtains 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 caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”