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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

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

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. 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 permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”