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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

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 the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its belief 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, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”