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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

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

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”