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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”