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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”