🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to 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 because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”