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Against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, 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 during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, 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 stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”