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Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

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

The apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”