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

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

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head 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 … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate 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.”