Norway’s Lutheran Church today apologized in an Oslo gay bar to the country’s LGBTQI+ community for the way it has treated it for decades, while thanking those who pioneered change.

In the 1950s the Synod of Bishops called homosexuals “a social danger of global scope” and their actions “perverse and shameful”.

“In 2022, the bishops of the Church of Norway admitted that the institution we lead has caused pain and trauma to homosexuals,” said Archbishop Olaf Fikse Tveit, in a speech inside the London Pub, one of the best-known gay bars in the Norwegian capital. “It is therefore only fair that we take our responsibilities as a Church and apologise,” he added, referring to “discrimination, different treatment and harassment” of homosexuals that led some of them to lose their faith.

The Church of Norway, which has 3.4 million members – about 60% of the country’s population – has now adopted a more liberal approach. Since 2007 it has allowed homosexuals to be ordained as pastors and since 2017 it has approved religious marriage between persons of the same sex.

The apology is a “positive and important” sign, but “came too late for those of us who died of AIDS (…) with our hearts full of anguish because the Church saw the epidemic as divine punishment,” commented Stephen Adam, head of the Federation for Gender and Sexuality Diversity. “We observe a populist and conservative, right-wing Christian wave spreading from country to country. In the US, Hungary and even Norway, it is increasingly acceptable for religious and political leaders to deny the human diversity of identity and body,” he added.

The London Pub was one of two bars to be attacked by gunfire in June 2022, on the sidelines of the Pride Parade, killing two people and injuring nine others. The attacker, Zaniar Matapour, a Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. He was sentenced for a terrorist act to 30 years in prison, with the possibility of extending his detention indefinitely.

In 2023 Olaf Fikse Tveit participated in the Pride March, the first archbishop to do so.

According to a survey by the Opinion institute, 65% of Norwegians thought that “it was time” for the Church to apologize to homosexuals. In recent years other Protestant churches, in England and Canada, have apologized for their attitude towards the LGBTQI+ community.