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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”