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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

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

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”