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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction 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, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”