The German Church continues to empty out while pursuing social experiments

Berlin - In recent hours, the German Bishops’ Conference, which since 24 February 2026 has had a new president, Bishop Heiner Wilmer, released the provisional figures for the 2025 ecclesial statistics. The overall picture confirms that the Catholic Church in Germany continues to shrink: the number of Catholics fell from 19,769,237 in 2024 to 19,219,601 in 2025, a loss of 549,636 faithful in a single year. It is true that formal departures declined, falling from 321,659 to 307,117, but the overall data do not justify optimistic readings: the haemorrhage is slowing, but it has not stopped, and to speak of a genuine reversal of the trend would be misleading. The most delicate signal concerns the transmission of the faith. Baptisms fell again, from 116,274 in 2024 to 109,028 in 2025. Over the same period, funerals remained vastly higher in number, even though they fell from 213,046 to 203,496. The figures provide a clear picture of the վիճe of a German Church that is unable …