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Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction 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 offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”