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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”