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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”