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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people 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 I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, 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 offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”