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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” 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 general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”