The St. Gallen SPI in fact indicated, on October 30, 2023, that 34,561 people had requested to leave the ecclesiastical registers last year, which exceeds the number of 34,182 in 2021. These exits represent a drop of 1.3% of registered members for the year 2022, reducing the number of Catholics to 2.89 million out of a population of 8.7 million.
The SPI established a projection showing that new annual records for departures would continue to be set due to the effect of the abuse crisis, which overwhelmed the Swiss Church in September.
Abuse
The Swiss Bishops’ Conference announced on September 10 that the Vatican had authorized a preliminary canonical investigation into allegations concerning several bishops.
On September 12, researchers from Zurich published a pilot study on abuse in the Swiss Catholic Church, documenting 1,002 cases of clerical abuse since 1950. This study, however, has been heavily criticized from various quarters for its methodology.
But, as the SPI notes, “the reputation of the Catholic Church has deteriorated in recent weeks and months.” He adds that “the report on the history of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Switzerland and its reception by the media and the public have seriously shaken confidence in the Church.”
Unfortunately, “we are talking about a systematic cover-up of cases, protection of perpetrators rather than victims, and other accusations still linger. All of this undermines the credibility of the Church and the number of people leaving the Church is expected to continue to grow.”
The figures also show that 1,080 people entered the Swiss Church in 2022. Although this is an increase compared to 2021 – the figure was 910 – it means that for every person who enters in the Church, 32 left it.
More Departures in the Cantons Bordering Germany
The institute found considerable regional variations in the number of departures. According to the SPI, the western cantons of Geneva, Valais, Neuchâtel, and Vaud recorded practically no departures. In fact, membership is not linked to the obligation to pay church tax, as is the case in other cantons.
Ecclesiastical tax rates vary from one canton to another. In the cantons which levy an ecclesiastical tax, Catholics can only free themselves from it by sending their parish of origin a written request to leave the Church.
The canton having recorded the greatest number of departures in 2022 is Basel-City, located on the border of France and Germany, where 3% of Catholics have left the Church. It is followed by the northern cantons of Aargau and Solothurn, with 2.7% and 2.2% respectively.
These three cantons are close to Germany, which also set a new record for annual departures in 2022. According to figures published in June, 522,821 people officially left the Catholic Church last year in Germany. Austria, also a neighbor of Switzerland, also recorded a new record in 2022, with 90,975 Catholics officially leaving the Church in 2022.
For comparison, 30,102 people left the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church in 2022 (2021: 28,540; 2020: 27,040). The number of its members stood at around 1.92 million at the end of 2022 (2021: 1.96 million). The Catholic Church therefore has around a million more members than the Reformed Church.
The 2022 official number of Church exits in Switzerland has once again broken a record, according to figures published this week by the Swiss Institute of Pastoral Sociology (SPI). This figure exceeds that of 2021 which had already set this sad record.