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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

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

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” 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 rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”