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Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view 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 issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”