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

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as 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 legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”