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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”