🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

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

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”