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

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a reaffirmation 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, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”