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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals 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 back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”