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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to 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 who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”