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Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute 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 confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”