The Catholic Church is still losing thousands of members. Overall, exit numbers remained at very high levels, as the Swiss Pastoral Sociological Institute (SPI) based in St. Gallen announced Friday. 34,182 people left the Catholic Church in Switzerland last year, more than ever before in a year. In 2020, 31,410 redundancies were registered, compared to 31,772 in the previous year.
Virtually no exits were registered in the cantons of Neuchâtel, Geneva, Wallis and Vaud. According to the information, this is for technical reasons: in the four cantons there is no membership structure linked to church tax liability from which one could withdraw.
If you calculate these four cantons, the national average of 1.5 in 100 members would have left the Church. This means that the value is comparable to that in the surrounding countries. In Germany the exit rate is 1.6 percent, in Austria and Switzerland 1.5 percent.
Most exits in Basel
The relatively largest loss of membership for the Catholic Church therefore took place in the canton of Basel-Stadt, where 3.6 of the 100 church members announced their resignation. Also in the cantons of Aargau and Solothurn, the outflow percentages of 2.4 percent each were well above the average.
According to the SPI, the Catholic Church in Switzerland had some 2.96 million members at the end of 2021, making it the largest national church. According to the survey, the Catholic Church is not alone with the large number of people leaving. In 2021, 28,540 people left the Evangelical Reformed Church. That is more than in 2020, when 27,040 exits were registered.
Dissatisfied with the attitude of the Catholic Church
The church statistics of the SPI are based on the one hand on our own surveys in the parishes and on the other hand on data from third parties, namely the Federal Bureau of Statistics (BFS).
The SPI explained that Catholics in particular left the church because they disagreed with her public statements. In a 2019 FSO survey, 36.8 percent of those surveyed said this was the overriding reason for leaving.
The institute explains that subjects such as the position of women in the church, dealing with gays and lesbians or remarried people can play an important role in this.
The picture is slightly different among the Reformed: 21 percent said they had never had a religion here. Criticism of public statements by the religious community as a reason for leaving came in second place with 19.7 percent. (SDA)