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Against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”