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Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged 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 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals 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 in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”