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

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”