🔗 Share this article

Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”