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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing 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 rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”