No records kept on people leaving Church

MORE than half of the Irish Catholic Church’s 26 dioceses failed to respond to Irish Examiner queries about defection rates over the past five years.

The 11 that responded – north and south of the border – said they do not keep formal records of defections and the bishops had to estimate how many letters they had received seeking to formally walk away from the Church.

Some of the dioceses said they had no defections in the past five years while others said they had three or four yearly.