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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”