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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”