Amid abuse scandals, Swiss Catholic Church sees wave of departures

"Heiliggeistkirche" church in Basel, Switzerland. Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

Hundreds of Swiss churchgoers have left the Catholic Church following revelations of sexual abuse.

The wave of departures is particularly strong in central Switzerland and Basel. In French-speaking Switzerland too, the number of departures has increased since mid-September, but at a lower level.

All the indications are that the “losses” in the Roman Catholic Church, which were already very pronounced in the record years of 2021 and 2022, have continued this year, even though the definitive figures drawn up annually by the Swiss Institute for Pastoral Sociology (SPI) have not yet been published.

“By 2023, we are heading for an increase in the number of departures for both the Catholic and Reformed churches,” Urs Winter, project manager at the SPI, told Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA.

Last year, some 34,600 people left the Catholic Church in Switzerland.

Data collected in the cantons by Keystone-ATS show an acceleration in departures since the publication on September 12 of a study by the University of Zurich (UZH) which identified more than 1,000 cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Switzerland since the middle of the last century, committed by more than 500 suspects.