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Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion 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 lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”