Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann is a self-confessed Catholic. But the circle of his fellow believers is shrinking. The churches in Baden-Württemberg have published current figures.
Freiburg/Rottenburg (dpa/lsw) - In the course of abuse reports and increasing numbers of baptisms, fewer and fewer Catholics live in Baden-Württemberg. With around 1.714 million believers at the end of 2021, the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese was the third largest in Germany after Cologne and Münster. According to information from Monday, the number of people leaving the church was at a record high of 28,212. According to the announcement, 30,043 people left the church in the Archdiocese of Freiburg last year. In 2020 there were 19,665. About 1.710 million Catholics live here in the fourth largest diocese in Germany. The evangelical churches in the southwest also reported falling numbers in March.
From the point of view of Rottenburg Bishop Gebhard Fürst, the exit numbers reflect “the deep crisis in which our church is not only because of the abuse scandal”. The fact that parties, associations and trade unions have been losing members massively for years "can't be any consolation for us as a church - it just hurts a lot!"
The Archbishop of Freiburg, Stephan Burger, said: "Every single exit hurts me." In times of war, pandemics and global crises, people's need for hope, orientation and support is greater than it has been for a long time. "As a church, let's try to be a humble, experienced and loving companion on the search for God and the meaning of life, despite all the problems that are currently occupying us."
Nationwide, too, the number of people leaving is at a record level: 359,338 Catholics turned their backs on their church in 2021, as the German Bishops' Conference in Bonn announced. Omissions and mistakes in the processing of the cases of sexual abuse were given as an important reason. The diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, which set up an independent commission in 2003, was also held responsible for problems elsewhere. "Clearly readable from the fact that after the publication of the abuse reports in Cologne and Munich in 2021/2022, the number of exits in the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart also skyrocketed in the following month."
The churches emphasized their offers as sponsors of day-care centers for children, educational institutions, libraries, secondary education schools and technical schools for social pedagogy. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers got involved in the community.
The decline in membership is also affecting the Protestant churches in Baden-Württemberg, which are less affected by the abuse scandals: the state church in Württemberg still had 1,869,199 members at the end of December, while those in Baden had 1,062,742. In addition to leaving the church, deaths are reasons for the decline. Baptisms, admissions and readmissions cannot compensate for this, even if the numbers are increasing here again in some cases compared to the Corona years.
