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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”