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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”