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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

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

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation 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 all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”