Silke Delarami struggles.

She hasn't decided yet, but the question of whether to leave the Catholic Church worries her a lot.

"The church has actually accompanied me my whole life," says the forty-year-old woman from Munich.

Baptism, First Communion, playing the flute in the service and confirmation were of course part of it.

Tobias Schrors

political editor.

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Question marks appeared a few years ago.

How does the church deal with power, women and homosexuals?

She also does not understand the meaning of celibacy.

"These are all things like that, I think: That can't be it." The abuse scandal was the last straw.

Can she still trust this church?

When the German Bishops' Conference publishes church statistics this week, Delarami will not appear in the column with those leaving the church.

Many others, however, do.

It's no longer just people who have had little to do with the church, who you might only see at Christmas at Mass.

The Church is beginning to erode at its core.

Many of those responsible in the community are fed up.

In the diocese of Speyer, even the vicar general resigned: Andreas Sturm left the Roman Catholic Church in May and joined the Old Catholic Church.

Almost everything that Catholics demand for reforms has been implemented there;

Women can become priests, there is no compulsory celibacy.

Anyone who speaks to people who have left the field learns that many are searching and expressing similar criticism.

And yet no story is like the other.

As a young adult, Silke Delarami lost sight of the church and found her again after the birth of her first son.

At that time she had good experiences.

The fact that she knows from that time how diverse the church can be doesn't make her decision any easier.

"I've seen so many exceptions," she says.

The pastor, for example, who baptized her child ten years ago.

"We were already prepared for the worst during the baptismal conversation," she remembers, "and were totally surprised afterwards." The sermons appealed to her because they had to do with their "lifeworld".

Doubts about the church grew when Delarami later quit her job in business to become a teacher.

She wanted to "change something and somehow straighten things out".

Upbringing means giving children values ​​to take with them.

Christianity plays an important role in this;

Charity, help, support each other.

She wrote her thesis in the subject of religious education.

Thinking about upbringing and values, she became aware of how important diversity, tolerance, equality and justice are to her - and how little this is lived in the Catholic Church.

"It kind of freaked me out," she says.

Does she have hope that something will change?

"Far too little happens in that direction."

What keeps Delarami in the church for now is the thought that she "would like to kind of localize" her faith.

She wonders if she could still go to a church service after leaving.

"I go to church alone quite often and say a prayer or just be quiet," she says.

“The question that remains for me now is: am I leaving, and am I personally setting an example by leaving?

Or do I stay in and am myself a small piece of change that I would like to see?"