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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”