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Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”