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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”