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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

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

The apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”