By Geir Moulson | Associated Press BERLIN—Another 400,000 people left the Catholic Church in Germany last year, though the number was down from a record set in 2022 as church leaders struggle to put a long-running scandal over abuse by clergy behind them and tackle calls for reform, official figures showed...
BERLIN—Another 400,000 people left the Catholic Church in Germany last year, though the number was down from a record set in 2022 as church leaders struggle to put a long-running scandal over abuse by clergy behind them and tackle calls for reform, official figures showed last week.
In Germany, people who are formally members of a church pay a so-called church tax that helps finance it in addition to the regular taxes the rest of the population pays. But many people have turned their backs on the church in recent years amid fallout from the scandal over abuse by clergy and others.
“The figures are alarming. They show that the church is in a wide-ranging crisis,” said the head of the bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing, whose diocese last year saw 13,000 people leave the church—2,000 fewer than a year earlier.
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