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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

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

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute 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, 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,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”