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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”