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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”