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Set against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his 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 injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute 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+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”