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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”