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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured 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 prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”