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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”