This year, 2024, the five dioceses that make up the region of East Germany will only have two new priests, a number that continues to decrease according to official statistics of the Catholic Church in the European country, which has been going through a serious crisis for some years.
According to reports katholisch.dethe news portal of the Catholic Church in Germany, “the downward trend continues: this year two men will be ordained priests throughout East Germany.”
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“This is the result of a survey carried out on Tuesday by the Catholic News Agency (KNA) among the five (arch)dioceses of East Germany,” he adds.
In 2023 there were only three ordinations of new priests, while in 2020 the total number was seven. Furthermore, the note laments, “across the country, fewer and fewer men have been ordained priests for a long time.”
According to the latest official statistics from the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), in 2022 there were only 45 ordinations in the 27 dioceses and archdioceses throughout the country.
Who are the two new priests that East Germany will have in 2024?
The ordination of 45-year-old Martin Hohmann to the priesthood will take place on Saturday, May 17, in the Mariendom Cathedral in Erfurt. Of Protestant origin, he embraced the Catholic faith at the age of 34.
The second priestly ordination will be on May 25 and will be presided over by Archbishop Heiner Koch, who will confer the sacrament of Orders in Berlin on Harald Frank, 49 years old. Before training for the priesthood he worked for 15 years in the technology area of a financial company.
The note also specifies that this year there will be no priestly ordinations in the dioceses of Magdeburg, Dresden-Meißen and Görlitz; so they “are left empty-handed.”
The serious crisis of the Catholic Church in Germany
For some years now, more and more faithful are leaving the Catholic Church in Germany, which has caused the president of the DBK to affirm that this nation is now “a country of mission”.
The massive departure of faithful – in mid-2023 it was reported that there were around half a million in 2022 – also coincides with the completion of the controversial German Synodal Path, which is not actually a synod, but an event designed to put pressure on the Church, as one of its founders has already admitted.
The multimillion-dollar German process not only aims to establish a permanent synodal council to oversee its findings, but delegates also passed several resolutions to change Church practices based on gender ideology.
They have also supported the priestly ordination of women, the blessing of same-sex couples, as well as changes in the Church’s teaching on the morality of sexual acts.
On more than one occasion, Pope Francis has addressed the bishops of Germany to clarify their procedure; and various bishops and cardinals have warned of the danger of schism.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.