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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described 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 Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”