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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”