In 2022, 153,586 people in Bavaria left the Catholic Church. This was announced by the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) on Wednesday in Bonn. There was also a negative record nationwide with more than half a million people leaving the church. “The Catholic Church is dying an agonizing death in front of the eyes of the public,” canon lawyer Thomas Schüler told the German Press Agency.
In Bavaria, more than 5.8 million people were Catholic in 2022. For comparison: North Rhine-Westphalia had more than 6.1 million Catholics – but had fewer resignations than Bavaria, namely 143,408. It had already become apparent at the beginning of 2022 that the already dramatic development for the Catholic Church would accelerate 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 Pope Benedict XVI, who has died in the meantime. the exit numbers had literally exploded. 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.
Allegations of lying against the controversial Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, who was raided only this Tuesday, and legal disputes over compensation for abuse victims in Cologne and Traunstein also made headlines last year. The exit wave is not only rolling faster and faster in the Catholic Church. Around 48,500 people left the Evangelical Church in Bavaria in 2022, after 36,580 the year before.