🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”