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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people 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 back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”