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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”