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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, 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 based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”