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Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”