Schwerin (dpa / mv) - The number of professing Christians in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has continued to decrease. The Catholic Church counted 54,009 members in the Northeast last year after 54,566 the year before, as the Archbishop's Office in Schwerin announced on Monday. The number of baptisms rose from 139 to 198, it was said. But this was far from offsetting the resignations, the number of which increased from 634 to 961.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church is also suffering from a decline in membership. According to the North Church, around 224,000 members currently live in MV. Ten years ago it was 282,000. Overall, a good 17 percent of the residents of MV still belong to one of the two major Christian churches.
However, the Catholic Church recently had more members in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania than ten years earlier, which a spokesman attributes to, among other things, immigrants from Poland. In 2011, the Catholic Church reportedly had 53,715 members in MV. By 2018, their number had risen to a temporary high of 55,219.
