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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”