According to reports on abuse: the number of people leaving the church has exploded - the demand in Munich can hardly be dealt with

Created: 02/20/2022, 08:47

By: Katarina Amtmann

The abuse report seems to have consequences for the Catholic Church.

More and more people are leaving, the cities are reaching their limits.

Munich - Does the Catholic Church get the receipt for the results of the Munich abuse report?

Cities report a rush in church exits a month after the performance - and an expert expects a new negative record.

Munich abuse report: the number of people leaving the church in Bavaria has exploded

The abuse report by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is still making waves.

And apparently many Catholics draw conclusions from it.

Because the number of people leaving the church in Bavarian cities literally exploded after the report was presented a month ago.

This was the result of a survey by the German Press Agency among several cities in the Free State.

More church exits in Bavaria: the number in Munich has doubled

In Munich, for example, the number of resignations* doubled, as a spokesman for the district administration department (KVR) announced: “In the first half of January, i.e. before the report, we had about 80 church resignations per working day in Munich.

Since January 20, i.e. since the report, there have been around 150 to 160 people leaving the church every working day.

So about twice as many.”

And there could be even more.

"Demand is certainly three times higher than at the beginning of the year," said the spokesman.

But that was not manageable: "The limit here is our capacity limit, especially in terms of staff." And that even though the KVR has extended the opening hours and deployed more people.

"Despite extended opening hours and staff reassignments, it will probably not be possible to serve all exit requests promptly due to the very high demand." In Munich, no statistics are recorded as to whether people are leaving the Catholic or the Evangelical Church.

Record year for church exits?

"The probability is very high"

And things could get even worse for the church: The religious education teacher Ulrich Riegel, who conducted a well-regarded study on church exits in the diocese of Essen, expects a new exit record this year.

"The probability is very high." He can only speculate about the reasons why so many people react so promptly to the report: "On the one hand, the report was much clearer than the previous ones, because it named specific people.

On the other hand, Joseph Ratzinger was one of those addressed who, as papa emeritus, had a greater public impact than the bishops of Cologne and Munich, for example,” he says.

"Moreover, Ratzinger's reaction to the report may well have confirmed many of the accusations that are being made about the church's handling of the abuse."

Other cities in the Free State confirm the trend from Munich: The registry office in Nuremberg* reported between the day the abuse report was presented on January 20 and February 14, 617 people left the church, 381 from the Catholic, 234 from the Protestant church and two others.

Two years ago - in the comparison year 2020 - the registry office had only 372 resignations in this period, of which 200 were Catholic, 165 Protestant and seven others.

Munich abuse report - misconduct: allegations against Pope Benedict

The report by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), presented on January 20 and commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising itself, came to the conclusion that cases of sexual abuse in the diocese had not been dealt with appropriately for decades.

The experts assume at least 497 victims and 235 alleged perpetrators, but at the same time from a significantly larger number of unreported cases.

They raised serious allegations against, among others, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, whom they accuse of fourfold misconduct in dealing with cases of abuse.

In Regensburg*, the city in which Ratzinger lived and worked as a professor of theology and in which he visited his brother Georg shortly before his death* in 2020, the registry office has counted around 550 people leaving the church since the beginning of the year - compared to 269 in the previous year.

Church exits in Bavaria are exploding: high demand for appointments

In Ingolstadt, 254 people declared their withdrawal from the church from January 20 to February 17 - in the same period last year there were 84. "The registry office reports continued high demand for exit dates," said a spokesman for the city and in Würzburg after the presentation of the report, 320 requests to leave were received, 230 more than in 2021 at the same time.

Between January 1st and February 17th, 366 people took this step there.

In the same period last year there were 208.

Church departures in 2020

Catholic Church: 221,390

Evangelical Church: 220,000

More Church Leavings According to Abuse Reports: Confirmation of a Trend

According to the Munich report, the religious educator Riegel does not see a new quality, despite the figures from the Bavarian municipalities - rather the confirmation of a trend.

“All studies on the motives for leaving in the last few decades show a relatively constant picture of the motives for leaving.

However, the motives related to the actions of the church are likely to be more important for the exit than other motives at the moment,” he says.

“Where I see a new quality is the internal church discussion.

It's only speculation, but many of the resolutions of the last assembly of the synodal path would hardly have been so clear if this report hadn't existed." In the context of the synodal path, the currently ongoing reform process within the Catholic Churches in Germany, were recently astonishing Liberal resolutions favor women deacons, married priests, the blessing of homosexual couples, and giving believers a say in the election of bishops.