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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

Back in 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 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 differing opinions. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”