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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 harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

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

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”