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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 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.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”