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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”