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Set against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

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 the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”