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Against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination 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. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing 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 wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”