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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration 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 – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”