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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”