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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

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

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison 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+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent 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+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”