🔗 Share this article

Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”