The Catholic Church seems to be getting the reward for the results of the Munich abuse report: Cities are reporting a significant increase in church exits in the first quarter of the year.
Since the beginning of the year, significantly more people have left the church than in previous years. This was the result of a survey by the German Press Agency among larger municipalities in Germany.
Thousands turned their backs on the Church. One reason for this may be the report on cases of abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which was presented at the end of January and made headlines around the world.
The city of Munich alone recorded 9,074 people leaving the church by April 8, according to a spokesman for the district administration department. In the comparative period of 2021, there were just under 5,000. The respective denomination was not recorded.
In the first half of January, i.e. before the report, about 80 people had left the church every working day in Munich; after January 20, the day the report was presented, there were sometimes up to 160 people leaving the church per working day – about twice as many.
The city of Augsburg reported 1,012 resignations by April 8 – around 300 more than at the same time last year. In Regensburg, where the later Pope Benedict XVI. when Joseph Ratzinger once taught at the university, the number of 1470 resignations was even more than twice as high as in 2021 (681).
Leaving the church not only in Bavaria
But not only in Bavaria did people leave the church in droves in the first three months of the year. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), Georg Bätzing, recently said at the spring plenary assembly in the pilgrimage site of Vierzehnheiligen that the faithful were turning their backs on their church “in droves”.
The trend is similar across Germany: In Cologne, the number of people leaving the church in the first quarter of this year was 5,780, while in 2021 it was only 3,346 in the first three months. In Münster, the number of people leaving the church in the first quarter of 2022 was according to the district court 1655 compared to 896 in the same period last year.
In cities in Baden-Württemberg, the number of people leaving the church in the first three months of the year was twice as high as in the same period of the previous year. According to the municipality, 1,183 people in the Baden city of Freiburg had declared their withdrawal from the church by April. In the previous year, 561 people had left the church. At 813, the Catholic Church accounted for the majority of those leaving this year in Freiburg. In Ludwigsburg, Ulm and Konstanz, too, the numbers increased compared to the previous year.
In the first three months of this year up to April 8, 2140 people in the Lower Saxony state capital Hanover turned their backs on their church, including 782 Catholics. In the corresponding period of the previous year there were 1669 people.
In the two major Saxon cities of Dresden and Leipzig, significantly more people have left the church since the beginning of the year than in the same period last year. There were 725 church exits in Dresden by April 8 – compared to only 69 in the same period of 2021. According to the city, this is also due to a pandemic emergency operation at the time. In Leipzig, 853 people have left the church since the beginning of the year. In 2021 there were 617 in the same period.
Reports on misuse caused a stir
On January 20, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) presented an expert opinion on behalf of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The experts assume at least 497 victims and 235 alleged perpetrators, but at the same time from a significantly higher number of unreported cases – and from the fact that Munich archbishops – including the later Pope Benedict XVI. – had behaved incorrectly in dealing with it.
The religious educator Ulrich Riegel, who led a widely acclaimed study of church exits in the diocese of Essen, was already counting on a new exit record this year at the end of February. “The probability is very high.” The Munich report is “much clearer than the previous ones, because it named specific people,” he said. And with Ratzinger, “one person among those addressed is one who, as papa emeritus, has a greater public impact than, for example, the bishops of Cologne and Munich”.
At the end of 2021, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) only had around 19.725 million members – a decrease of 2.5 percent compared to the previous year. The Catholic German Bishops’ Conference does not want to announce the figures for 2021 until the end of June. However, the effects of the Munich abuse report will not yet be recorded there.
Source: Stern
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