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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” 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 apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”