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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” 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, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”