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Set against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”