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Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”