Catholic Church experiences exodus in wake of sex abuse scandal

Hundreds have left the Catholic Church in several Swiss cities. Keystone / Anthony Anex

The exodus of the Swiss faithful accelerated further following the sexual abuse scandal. In Fribourg alone, no less than 500 people have left the Catholic Church in the last three weeks. The institution, which depends on ecclesiastical taxes, is worried about its future.

“For personal reasons, I no longer wish to be subject to church tax.” Jérémy Stauffacher, an independent lawyer, no longer wishes to pay for the Catholic Church, which he made known last week in a letter addressed to his parish.

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If the lawyer had already been thinking about it for some time, the latest cases of sexual abuse pushed him to give up the services of the institution.

“The letter had been ready for a while, I had typed it on my computer,” he told Swiss public broadcaster RTS. “And ultimately, the events that took place served as a trigger for me, without it necessarily being a vendetta against the Church.”

And Jérémy Stauffacher is not the only one to distance himself from the institution. Over the last three weeks, 500 baptized people have left the Church, in the canton of Friborg alone. This is a record, since it represents a third of annual releases.

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Widespread disatisfaction

Hundreds of faithful also left the Church in the cities of St Gallen, Lucerne, Basel and Zurich. In Valais, there are 15 for the current year, including 12 in recent weeks.

This erosion has accelerated, but it has been eating away at the institution for a long time. In ten years, departures have really jumped in Switzerland, going from 13,809 in 2011 to 34,182 in 2021.

The general secretary of the Catholic Ecclesiastical Corporation of the canton of Fribourg, David Neuhaus, regrets that the acceleration of these departures occurs while the Catholic Church is trying to shed all light on its past.

The University of Zurich study documenting more than 1,000 cases of sexual abuse was indeed commissioned by three Catholic bodies, including the Swiss Bishops’ Conference.

Sad feeling

“It is at a time when the Catholic Church, by commissioning this study, is in search of the truth that people are massively leaving the Church,” he laments. “And for us, it’s a very sad feeling.”

The Church, which depends on ecclesiastical taxes, is worried about its future. According to David Neuhaus, without the revenue from these taxes, many services can no longer be provided.

“We have many tasks linked to solidarity, to diaconia, therefore helping others, the fight against precariousness, at the level of chaplaincies, helping people at the end of their lives,” he lists. “This is all that we preterite when we leave the Church.”

According to a projection from the Ecoplan research office, the Swiss Catholic Church will no longer be able to compensate for the reduction in taxes from 2030 if it does not take measures.