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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”