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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

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

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”