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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, 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”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”