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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 harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. 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 in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”