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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

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, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to 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 among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”