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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”