Posted on 11/10/2022 7:32:28 PM PST by marshmallow
Around 2,500 more people left than in the previous record-setting year of 2019.
A record number of Swiss Catholics formally left the Church in 2021, according to new statistics.
The Swiss Institute of Pastoral Sociology (SPI) in St. Gallen said that 34,182 people left the Church last year, around 2,500 more than in the previous record-setting year of 2019.
Around 2.96 million people remained members of the Church at the end of 2021, out of a total Swiss population of roughly 8.7 million.
The Protestant Church in Switzerland also reported a record number of departures in 2021, with 28,540 exits.
Switzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons. The latest Church departure figures do not include cantons where membership is not linked to the payment of church tax, such as Geneva, Valais, Neuchâtel, and Vaud, reported the Swiss Catholic Church website kath.ch.
The rate of departures varied from canton to canton. Basel-Stadt, Switzerland’s northernmost canton, recorded the highest exit rate of 3.6%, while the nearby cantons of Aargau and Solothurn also recorded relatively high figures of 2.4%.
(Excerpt) Read more at pillarcatholic.com ...
Sad.
Hopefully, they find a real church.
Indeed. Because they left the Catholic Church does not mean they do not currently have one.
Exactly. Among other failings, the Catholic Church around the world showed they didn't believe in God when they embraced government lockdowns.
If they're just a government church, why go? You could go "spiritualize" down at the Division of Motor Vehicles.
When I lived in Switzerland, there were only two choices: Catholic or Reform (with Reform being analogous to our Lutheran). Whichever church you belonged to, you had to pay an extra church tax, and even back then believers formally left churches to avoid the tax. So...
In 2015 the Eurobarometer found that Christianity was the religion for 47.6% of the respondents, with Protestantism being the main denomination with 36.5%, followed by other Christians with 8.6%, Catholics with 1.6% and Eastern Orthodox with 0.8%. 31.0% of the sample declared to be Agnostic and 19.0% declared to be atheist.[11] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden#Surveys
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