Jakarta –
The number of people leaving the Catholic Church has hit a record high in 2022, the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) reported on Wednesday.
A total of 522,821 people last year ended their official relationship with the church. This number exceeds the record that was broken in 2021, namely 359,338 people who left the Church.
The trend of leaving the Church follows a series of child abuse scandals that rocked the church in Germany, and elsewhere.
Even though more people are leaving the church, there are still 20.94 million people, or less than about a quarter of Germany’s population, who are registered as church members.
The church was mired in scandal
DBK did not provide a reason for the record number of people leaving as registered members of the church. But Irme Stetter-Karp, head of the Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential lay organization, said she was “saddened but not surprised.”
“The church has squandered trust, especially as a result of the abuse scandal. But this time also does not show enough determination to implement the vision of the future of Christian life in the church,” he added.
A report commissioned by the church itself and published in 2018 said at least 3,677 people, mostly children under the age of 13, were abused by Catholic priests between 1946 and 2014.
Another report published in January 2022 stated that the late Pope Benedict XVI had failed to prevent child abuse during his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.
Meanwhile this week, police conducted a raid on a location linked to the archbishop of Kln, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, over allegations of false statements he made regarding alleged sexual abuse by members of the clergy.
German ‘church tax’
Registered church members in Germany pay a “church tax”. The church tax rate is between 8% and 9% of an individual’s income. This tax goes directly to the church, both Catholic and Protestant.
The loss of members who pay church taxes also means a loss of funds for the church. These funds are used to maintain communities, even in the most remote rural areas of Germany.
“The Catholic Church is dying a painful death in front of the public eye,” Thomas Schller, an expert on Catholic canon law at the University of Mnster and observer of the German Catholic Church, told German news agency DPA.
It’s not just the Catholic Church that is suffering from waves of people leaving. Mainline Protestant churches have also seen a decline in the number of registered followers. In 2022, around 380,000 left the German Evangelical Church.
rs/as(dpa, AP)
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(it/it)
2023-07-01 11:47:28
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