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Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”