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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 discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”