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Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”