“Annus Horribilis” for the Church in Germany. But Also in Italy and in the Vatican
… if Germany is weeping, Italy is not laughing. Here the numbers are making the rounds out of the limelight and without commotion
… 8 percent of Italians and 11 percent of Catholics recognized the Church’s ability to “make sense”
… free to indicate or not, with a signature, who should get the proceeds
… 2011 reached the record peak of 15,604,034
… In 2017 there were 13,774,382
… 2018 … 13,520,527
… 2019 … 13,156,158
… 2020 … 12,056,389
… is six times lower than the roughly six billion that the German Catholic Church collects every year from the state, thanks to the different mechanism of the “Kirchensteuer,”
… Peter’s Pence … 83 million euros in 2014, the first full year of Francis’s pontificate
… [ 2017 ] it fell to 64 million
… 2020 … 54 million
… their judgment on the ecclesiastical institution is an explanation shared by many observers, for example by Andrea Riccardi, Church historian and founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio