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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in 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 swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back 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 during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”