Nuncio laments post–Communist decline of Christianity

The German nuncio, Arch­bishop Nikola Eterovic, has called on the German bishops to boost evangelisation in eastern Germany, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. The drop in the number of Christians there in recent years has become truly alarming, he says.

According to a study by the University of Münster, the number of people in former eastern Germany who believed in a personal God had more than halved between 1990 – the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall – and 2008. In other former Eastern Bloc countries, the number of Christians had either risen or only slightly dropped since the demise of Communism. However, only 14 per cent of eastern Germans today were Christian, Archbishop Eterovic said at the opening of the German bishops’ conference’s spring plenary. In 1989, despite persecution under Communism, an estimated 25 per cent of the East German population was Protestant and 6 per cent Catholic.