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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

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

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast 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 to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”