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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

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

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”