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:
katholisch.de/artikel/54323-…
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:
dbk.de/presse/aktuell…
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.
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”:
de.catholicnewsagency.com/news/16046/meh…
For a sense of how unevenly Catholics are spread throughout Germany, take a look at this graphic produced by the German bishops’ conference:
tinyurl.com/4h5vexz8