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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”