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Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted 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 had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”