Oh God!: More people left the church than ever before in Germany

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At the beginning of 2022 it had already become clear that the development, which was already dramatic for the Catholic Church, would gain momentum again. Especially after the presentation of a report on abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in January and the discussion about the complicity of the now deceased Pope Benedict XVI. the exit numbers had literally exploded.

Allegations of lying to the controversial Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, who was only robbed last Tuesday, and legal disputes over compensation for abuse victims in Cologne and in Traunstein in Upper Bavaria also made headlines last year.

“The Catholic Church is dying an agonizing death in front of the public,” said canon lawyer Thomas Schüller of the German news agency.

The exit wave is not only rolling faster and faster in the Catholic Church. With 380,000 members, the Protestant Church also lost more in 2022 than in the previous year.

Since the Reformation in the 16th century, Germany has been a mixed religious country with a predominantly Catholic south and west and a Protestant north and east. Today, the two major denominations together represent less than half of the population; around the turn of the millennium it was still 65 percent. About four percent are Muslim. The largest population group are people who do not belong to a religious community. Their share is particularly high due to 40 years of communism in the area of ​​the former GDR.

(SDA)

Source: Blick