CNA Staff, Mar 12, 2021 / 03:00 am
A third of all German Catholics are considering leaving the Church, according to a new survey published on Thursday.
The representative study, unveiled March 11, was conducted by the Erfurt-based opinion research institute INSA Consulere on behalf of the Catholic weekly newspaper Die Tagespost and the Protestant news agency Idea. It confirms a previous survey’s findings that indicated similar numbers.
Of those surveyed who belong to the Catholic Church, 33% are considering leaving the church because of the ongoing scandals over the handling of clerical sex abuse cases, while 44% answered they were not going to turn their back on the Church. A further 14% of respondents indicated they “didn’t know.” Nine percent of those involved in the survey did not specify an answer.
CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German language news partner, reported that the new survey also found that one in four members of the Protestant regional churches in Germany stated they might be “leaving the church soon.”