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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, 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 rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”