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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”