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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church 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 during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”