Over 300,000 Germans left the Catholic Church in 2024
March 27, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: The German bishops’ conference has reported that 321,611 people formally removed their registration as Catholics in 2024, as the number of Catholics in the German population dropped below 20 million.
The exodus was actually less severe than in the previous two years. In 2023, more than 400,000 Catholics dropped their registration; in 2022 the figure peaked at 520,000.
Germany’s “church tax” imposes a surtax on the levies of those who declare a religious affiliation. The funds from that surtax are turned over to the denomination, providing the main source of the enormous wealth of the Catholic Church in Germany. Inactive Catholics therefore have an incentive for declaring their departure, to avoid the surtax.
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