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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in 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 expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”