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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

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

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”