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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”