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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church 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 was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all 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, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”