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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths 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 carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

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