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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”