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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”