Poland’s Catholic church is to begin collecting data on how many people are formally leaving the faith and why they are doing so, as it seeks to gauge what it admits is a growing phenomenon.
Reports have indicated a rising number of apostasies in Poland in recent months. They have come as the church faces scrutiny and criticism over revelations of clerical sex abuse and cover-ups of it, as well as a recent ruling – supported by the church – introducing a near total ban on abortion.
“Compared to the number of baptisms, it is still a small percentage [leaving the church], but we have signals, not only from the press, that the number of apostasies is increasing,” said Rev. Dr Wojciech Sadłoń, director of the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics (ISKK), quoted by Interia.
Sadłoń announced this week that his institute would begin investigating apostasy numbers, having last done so almost a decade ago. This would include researching people’s motivations for leaving the church.
“We are concluding from conversations with parish priests that in general, apostasy of course results from a lack of faith, but also negative perception of the role of the institution of the church and its presence in the public space, including the belief – unrelated to reality – that the church does not pay taxes,” he added.
Because the church had not produced any official figures on apostasy since 2010 – when 459 people left the church, according to the ISKK – recent reports on the growth in apostasy have relied on anecdotes as well as indirect data.
Google statistics, for example, show that web searches for apostasy in Poland recently reached an all-time high. The spike came following a Constitutional Court ruling that called for outlawing almost all abortion, prompting mass demonstrations during which many protesters directed anger against the church.
Google searches for "apostasy" in Poland have never been as high as they are now.
The country's Catholic church is facing a crisis following the abortion ruling and reports of child sex abuse cover-ups pic.twitter.com/hQt7LAyKtw
— Daniel Tilles (@danieltilles1) December 9, 2020
Earlier this month, members of the left-wing Spring (Wiosna) party launched an “Apostasy Counter” website to act as a “census of people who have left the church in Poland”.
It asks people to email a copy of their apostasy document. Their anonymised details and year of apostasy are then published on the website. The counter is approaching 1,000 entries as of Wednesday morning, with the most commonly listed year of apostasy being 2020.
Some who have sought apostasy in Poland – where, according to Statistics Poland (GUS), a government agency, 92% of people are Roman Catholics – say that the process is not made easy by the church.
However, in 2015, the Polish Episcopal Conference, the central organ of the church in Poland, issued a decree simplifying the procedure, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
Applicants must be aged at least 18 and go in person to the parish where they live, having previously obtained a baptismal certificate from the parish where they were christened and signed three copies of a declaration of leaving the church.
Previously, they were also required to bring two witnesses to the meeting with a priest and then come back again after a period of soul-searching to confirm that they uphold their decision.
A crowdsourced “apostasy map” produced earlier this month, which asked people to share their experiences of leaving the church in various parts of Poland, found that only 6.7% of people reported having had a difficult time receiving their apostasy certificate, while almost 76% had found it easy.
Although the Catholic church in Poland remains influential, various data in recent years have suggested that it is losing its authority and trust.
Last month, a survey found that only 9% of the youngest respondents had a positive view of the church, and almost half of them a negative one. A poll in January found that the Catholic church had seen a larger decline in trust than any other major institution in Poland.
As well as anger over abortion, distrust towards the church has been stoked by a series of claims that senior figures in Poland’s Catholic hierarchy sought to cover up cases of child sex abuse by priests. The revelations prompted the Vatican this year to take disciplinary action against a Polish cardinal and a bishop.
Main image credit: Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
