Exodus from Church shows an increase of 20 per cent

The number of Catholics officially to leave the Catholic Church in 2014 rose by 20 per cent on the previous year to reach a new record high of 217, 716, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

The statistic had made the Church “painfully aware of the fact that our message is not reaching people”, the president of the German bishops’ conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, said in Bonn on 17 July. Each exit was a “personal life decision which we deeply deplore but respect as a free decision”, he said. The Church would continue to carry the faith out into society.

The figures showed that it still had missionary vigour as 2,809 people had become Catholics, 6,314 had found their way back after officially leaving, church attendance was up by 0.1 per cent to 10.9 per cent, and while priest numbers continued to fall, church marriages and baptisms had increased, Marx said.  Germany’s Catholic population fell by 0.9 per cent from 24,170,754 in 2013 to 23,939,472 in 2014.