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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, 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 Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, 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 every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”