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RELIGION

Record number of Catholics leave German Church

More than half a million people in Germany left the Catholic Church last year, the country's bishops' conference said Wednesday, topping a record set in 2021 amid rampant sexual abuse scandals.

Published: 28 June 2023 17:20 CEST
Catholic church sermon Hanover
A priest conducts a sermon at a catholic church in Hanover. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Julian Stratenschulte

In a development described by a Catholic members’ group as a “serious crisis”, 522,821 people turned their backs on the Church in 2022, with the strife-racked Cologne diocese — Germany’s largest — the hardest hit.

It was the largest number to walk away from the Church in a single year, topping the previous high of 359,338 set in 2021.

By the end of 2022, 24.8 percent of the EU’s largest nation was registered as Catholic, with some 20.9 million members.

Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, called the figures “sad if not very surprising”.

Noting that the Church had squandered a lot of “trust” with rampant molestation of children by priests, she said the Church would have to work hard to return the faithful to the flock.

The Church “is not being decisive enough in implementing visions for a future of being Christian”, Stetter-Karp criticised in a statement.

“People leaving the Church is a sign of a serious crisis and a push for change.”

READ ALSO: ‘Historic break’: Church-goers now a minority in Germany

Georg Bätzing, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, said the Church was on a path of reform and urged members “not to be discouraged”.

The Protestant Church in Germany counted some 19.1 million members at the end of 2022, with some 380,000 people leaving last year.

Germany’s Catholic Church has been rocked by a long series of allegations of predatory priests abusing children and youths in their congregations. 

READ ALSO: German Catholics challenge Vatican with sweeping reform drive

A study commissioned by the German Bishops’ Conference in 2018 concluded that 1,670 clergymen had committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014.

The real number of victims is thought to be much higher.

On Tuesday, German investigators staged raids in the archdiocese of Cologne in a perjury probe against its Cardinal Rainer Maria Wölki linked to media coverage of the Church’s sex abuse scandals.

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SOCIETY

Why has Germany dropped down the rankings in freedom of expression?

According to a report by the NGO Civicus, Germany is no longer an "open" country and freedom of expression has "narrowed" due to excessive crackdowns on climate and pro-Palestinian protesters.

Published: 8 December 2023 16:02 CET
Why has Germany dropped down the rankings in freedom of expression?

For many years Germany was considered one of the top countries in the world in the annual Monitor by NGO Civicus and categorised as one of the world’s few “open” countries, but amid a wave of prosecutions against pro-Palestinian and climate protesters, the country’s ranking has dropped down to “narrowed.”

Germany was just one of two countries in Europe to be downgraded, alongside Bosnia and Herzegovina, dropping from 84 to 76 points in the freedom ranking, which looks at freedom of expression and assembly.

“We have identified and documented some concerning trends in Germany which are also present in the entire EU and even wider: a very repressive and disproportionate response to the mass mobilisation of climate groups and civil society organisations, which we’ve seen across the year,” Tara Petrovic, Civicus lead researcher for Europe and Central Asia, told The Local.

READ ALSO: German police carry out nationwide raids against climate activists

One other emerging trend in the report – which covers up to October 31st – is the restriction of protest in solidarity with Palestine.

The report states that “police used excessive force against pro-Palestinian protesters in a district of Berlin with a significant Arab population, including deploying pepper spray and water cannons and arresting 174 people” and that “authorities also banned pro-Palestinian protests in Berlin and Frankfurt, in line with similar bans in past years”, concluding that “such restrictions on the ability to gather and demonstrate are discriminatory in nature and violate the right to peaceful assembly.”

Petrovic pointed to “preventative or blanket bans on protest, which we’ve seen in multiple cities before this was struck down by a court” as “clear violations of the freedom of peaceful assembly.”

“This stands in contrast to freedom regardless of the context, with preventive protest bans and excessive force used by police”, she said, including the Nakbah day protests that were banned in advance by police in Berlin in May 2023.

PODCAST: Why is Germany coming down hard on Palestine solidarity protests?

As justification for pre-emptively banning demonstrations, German police have said they want to prevent expressions of anti-Semitism and have argued that such gatherings could pose a threat to the public order or incite violence by glorifying the October 7th attacks. 

However, Petrovic said police have often overstepped the mark. 

She gave the example of the arrest of a protester in Berlin’s Neukölln district for holding a sign saying “as an Israeli Jew I stand against genocide in Gaza”.

Pro-Palestine demo

Demonstrators hold Palestine flags at a solidarity protest in Bochum as police vans line up across the street. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Fabian Strauch

“This represents an overreach of police conduct represent regardless of perceptions of what Germany’s foreign policy stance towards Israel should be,” Petrovic argued.

“Just using the term genocide without any discriminatory violence… does not contain messages that are outside the scope of polite expression”

The Global Findings report points to particular incidents like the raiding of the homes of 11 Last Generation activists in December 2022 and confiscation of their phones and laptops, as well as Munich public prosecutors office’s admission that they had engaged in surveillance of Last Generation’s communications, including with journalists.

“We see this as a disproportionate response,” Petrovic said.

These trends are taking place across the world, with the percentage of the world’s population living in “open” countries – the top category – having almost halved to just 2.1 percent since 2018 when Civicus began. Meanwhile, almost a third of the world’s population are living in the most restrictive civic spaces possible, a category which includes China and Saudi Arabia.

READ ALSO: Could Germany strip citizenship rights from foreigners over anti-Semitism?

So how does Civicus arrive at the decisions?

As well as in-house expertise, they rely on research by organisations like Freedom House or Reporters without Borders to draw up the ranking which looks at the three fundamental freedoms: expression, assembly and association.

“This isn’t an arbitrary decision,” Petrovic said.

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