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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”