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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”