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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 perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”