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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”