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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

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 take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people 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 during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation 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 all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”