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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The head of a network for 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 “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be 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+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”