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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”