Swiss Church ‘resignations’ doubled amid abuse scandal

“The Church continues to shrink. Unfortunately, this is a trend that cannot be stopped,” said Bishop Felix Gmür of Basel, president of the Swiss bishops’ conference.

The number of people who formally left the Catholic Church in Switzerland doubled from 2022 to 2023, according to an official report.

The Swiss Pastoral-Sociological Institute (RKZ) found that 67,497 people left the Church last year, compared to 34,561 the year before.

This “explosive wave of resignations” was a serious warning from the laity, Urs Brosi, general secretary of the Roman Catholic Central Conference, told the kath.ch outlet.

In September 2023 it emerged that six bishops were under investigation for covering up sexual abuse scandals.

Bishop Markus Büchel of St Gallen said he hoped more synodality could bring change. “We must be creative, we must become creative,” he said.  “The Church must listen and introduce equal rights.”

Most responses were more grim. “The Church continues to shrink. Unfortunately, this is a trend that cannot be stopped,” said Bishop Felix Gmür of Basel, president of the Swiss bishops’ conference.

Revelations from a number of sources last September established that Bishop Jean-Marie Lovey of Sion, Bishop Charles Morerod of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, Abbot Jean Scarcella of Saint Maurice abbey and Bishop Alain de Raemy, the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Ticino, were subject to a Vatican investigation, as well as the former Bishop of Reykjavik Pierre Bürcher and the former nuncio Archbishop Jean-Claude Périsset.  Those who have responded gave only vague statements.

The same month, a Zurich University study commissioned by the Church identified 1,002 cases of abuse and 510 perpetrators since the 1950s. It called these figures the “tip of the iceberg”.

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops reprimanded several Swiss bishops last month for “not correctly” addressing accusations of clerical sexual abuse, but did not find cause for a canonical trial.

Just over 30 per cent of the Swiss population is Catholic, overtaken in recent years by non-believers as the country’s largest religious group. The various Protestant denominations have shrunk to about 20 per cent while Islam, Judaism and other small faith communities have grown.

As a small country with four official languages and 26 cantons, Switzerland’s religious map is a patchwork. The RKZ study excluded four French-speaking cantons because they do not have the German-style church tax that reveals the number of departures annually.

The highest level of departures were in Aargau, Basel City and Solothurn, all cantons on or near the German border.

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