Number of German Catholics formally leaving the Church since 2019, when the “synodal way” was launched : 2019: 272,771 2020: 221,390 2021: 359,338 2022: 522,821 2023: 402,694 Total: 1,779,014 German report: https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/54323-weniger-kirchenaustritte-als-im-vorjahr-aber-zweithoechster-wert…

German Catholic officials are likely to be relieved that the number of “church exits” fell from 2022 to 2023. But 402,694 is still the second-highest annual figure ever recorded. German press release: https://www.dbk.de/presse/aktuelles/meldung/kirchenstatistik-2023…

Interestingly, the proportion of German Catholics attending Mass rose from 5.7% in 2022 to 6.2% in 2023. The number of people joining the Church also increased, from 1,447 in 2022 to 1,559 in 2023. So the picture is not uniformly bleak. https://tinyurl.com/4h5vexz8

There were a total of 20,345,872 Catholics recorded in Germany in 2023. As @CNA Deutsch points out, this “means that in 2024 there could be fewer than 20 million Catholics in Germany for the first time”: https://de.catholicnewsagency.com/news/16046/mehr-als-400000-kirchenaustritte-im-jahr-2023-messbesuch-bei-62-prozent…

For a sense of how unevenly Catholics are spread throughout Germany, take a look at this graphic produced by the German bishops’ conference: https://tinyurl.com/4h5vexz8