“We should get in touch with these people, talk to them without being intrusive. These times of a mission with a negative tone are over, but speaking and answering questions about the hope that fills us, as the letter to the Hebrews says, is part of Christianity.”
Bätzing has led the Diocese of Limburg since 2016 and the German Bishops’ Conference since 2020. In 2016, more than 630,000 Catholics resided in Limburg. By 2022, this number had dropped to fewer than 540,000.
The Catholic population in Germany, a nation of about 83 million people, has significantly decreased.
In 2020, there were approximately 22.19 million Catholics. However, by 2022, this number had dropped to about 20.94 million.
Researchers paint a stark picture of the future: In 2019, a project of scientists at the University of Freiburg predicted that the number of Christians paying church tax in Germany would halve by 2060.
Three years later, in 2022, more than half a million baptized Catholics left the Church, figures released by the German Bishops’ Conference confirmed.
