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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised 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”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, 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 in the church’s history”.

According to 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 among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”