More than 600,000 German Catholics and Protestants left the church in 2025, official figures revealed on Monday, as Germany's two main Christian churches continued to haemorrhage members, reported dpa. The Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) reported some 350,000 members quit last year, while some 307,000 people turned their backs on the Catholic Church. While the numbers represented a decline in dropouts for both churches compared to the previous year, they do not include the thousands of deaths that are responsible for a drop in membership each year, with the number of new members far too low to offset the trend. The latest decline means that the total number of Catholics in Germany has dropped to 19,2 million, accounting for 23% of the population, according to the German Bishops' Conference. In 2024, the Catholic Church in Germany still had 19.7 million members. Meanwhile, some 17.4 million Germans were members of a Protestant church last year, down from 17.9 million in 2024. Heiner Wilmer, the newly elected chair of the German Bishop's Conference expressed regret at the high number of people leaving the church. "Despite all the upheavals," he urged the faithful "not to bury the head in the sand" and search for ways "to ensure that being a Christian can lead to greater acceptance in society today."