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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. 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 in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”