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More than 600,000 German Catholics and Protestants left the church in 2025, official figures revealed on Monday, as Germany’s two main Christian churches continued to haemorrhage members.<\/p>\n
The Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) reported some 350,000 members quit last year, while some 307,000 people turned their backs on the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
While the numbers represented a decline in dropouts for both churches compared to the previous year, they do not include the thousands of deaths that are responsible for a drop in membership each year, with the number of new members far too low to offset the trend.<\/p>\n
The latest decline means that the total number of Catholics in Germany has dropped to 19,2 million, accounting for 23% of the population, according to the German Bishops’ Conference.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the Catholic Church in Germany still had 19.7 million members.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some 17.4 million Germans were members of a Protestant church last year, down from 17.9 million in 2024.<\/p>\n
Heiner Wilmer, the newly elected chair of the German Bishop’s Conference expressed regret at the high number of people leaving the church.<\/p>\n
“Despite all the upheavals,” he urged the faithful “not to bury the head in the sand” and search for ways “to ensure that being a Christian can lead to greater acceptance in society today.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n