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Amid 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 church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” 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”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”