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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” 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 Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”