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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. 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 received varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”