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Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”