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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”