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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church 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 allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”