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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

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

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “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”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”