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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality 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 church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”