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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”