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Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”