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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”