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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples 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 commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end 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 apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”