Sexual abuse revelations are hurting the Swiss Catholic Church

A believer prays in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Bern. Keystone / Monika Flueckiger

The number of people leaving the church has risen massively in Switzerland. Pastors are feeling the displeasure of the faithful. A snapshot of discontent in eastern Switzerland.

Since more than 1,000 cases of sexual abuse have come to light in Switzerland in the last 70 years, the Roman Catholic Church has been seething. There is a hail of church resignations.

The first figures come from the four largest Zurich parishes, Zurich, Winterthur, Uster and Dübendorf, which together have around 145,000 members. In the last two weeks, 778 people have left the church. That is as many as normally leave within three months.

Zurich parishes disillusioned

Hella Sodies is co-leader of the Greifensee parish, which belongs to the Uster parish. Sodies is disillusioned after the latest abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

She and her team want to be there for all people, in all their diversity. “If people no longer feel that we are on their side, then sooner or later the Catholic Church will become a men’s sect,” she says. “Then only those who feel connected to the current system, to the Vatican, will be left. And that’s almost no one left at the grassroots level.”

Youth chaplain Jonathan Gardy, with whom Sodies works closely, senses how young people are distancing themselves from the Church. They especially cannot comprehend the attitude of the Catholic Church towards homosexuals.
 

Service at the Bishops’ Conference on September 19, 2023 in St Gallen. © Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller

In view of the large number of departures, a sign from the bishops would be important. But Gardy doesn’t believe in it: “We don’t expect much more from the bishops. We wish they would stop saying so much about sexual morality. That sabotages our work at the grassroots level.”

Resentment also in St. Gallen

In the parish of St. Gallen, too, 120 people resigned in the last two weeks, five times more than normally in the same period. It is the price that has to be paid for the report on historic abuses, regrets Armin Bossart, president of the St. Gallen church council. Now is the time to finally look within.

Nevertheless, Bossart regrets the resignations very much. For as a result, tax revenues are lost. And so the church has less money for its social commitment, for example for people on the fringes of society.

“Ultimately, this reponse doesn’t work, I think it hits the wrong people. There are so many pastors who are very committed, and if they lack the resources, this commitment suffers,” says Bossart.
 

The two chaplains Hella Sodies and Jonathan Gardy regret the wave of departures. Rigendinger, Balz (swissinfo)

In Uster, the view is similar. The president of the Catholic parish, Albin Mitsche, points out that 85 per cent of the funds flow directly into the parish so that committed pastors can do their work.

Disobedience to superiors who do not want to move with the times is a way to change, according to Mitsche. Abolishing compulsory celibacy could be one idea. Or the possibility of a church wedding, or accompaniment, for same-sex couples. “The diocese must show change,” says Mitsche.

Sodies, the co-parish leader of the Greifensee parish, already lives this disobedience. “Only free people are good pastors,” she says.