🔗 Share this article

Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths 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 at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation 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 all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”