Christianity in Germany, and indeed in all of Europe, is dying. There are about 47 million Catholics and Protestants combined in Germany, representing roughly 60 percent of the German population, but that number is falling by 500,000 a year through deaths alone, according to the Gatestone Institute. All across Germany, churches now sit mostly empty on Sunday mornings, and it’s a problem for Catholics and Protestants alike.

In the year 2016 alone, the German Catholic Church lost 162,093 faithful attendees and closed 537 parishes, according to data from the German Bishops’ Conference. One-quarter of all German Catholic communities that existed in 1996 have now closed.

Similarly, in 2016, 340,000 German Protestants died while 190,000 people left the church. Only 25,000 people joined the church. Among all German Christians, there were about 1.4 million more deaths than births between 2010 and 2015. In all of Europe, there were almost 6 million more Christian deaths than births in that time period. According to the German publication Die Welt, Christians will become a minority in Germany by 2033. Fewer Catholics in Germany has also meant fewer priests.

Two dioceses did not receive any new priests this year, according to the German Catholic Church’s official website. The archdiocese of Munich received only one new candidate last year. In that archdiocese, which serves 1.7 million Catholics, there are only 37 seminarians currently in the training stages. Compare that to the American diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, which serves 96,000 Catholics and presently has 49 seminarians in training.

While Christianity is dying in Germany, Islam is on the rise. Historian Walter Laqueur wrote that Germany had about 700 “little mosques and prayer rooms” in the 1980s but “more than 2,500 at the present time” – and that was in 2009.

WND news editor Leo Hohmann, in his book, “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad,” describes how Muslim migrants are physically crowding out Christianity in Europe.

“Breitbart London reports that in churches across Europe, welcoming migrants has taken precedence over Christian worship,” Hohmann writes. “In Germany, an evangelical church stripped out pews, the altar, and the pulpit as well as all symbols of Christianity when offering it as a new home for migrants – so as to make them feel ‘more welcome in their new home.’”

Today, Turkey controls 900 mosques or religious communities in Germany. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is committed to building more mosques in European capitals, just as he has built 17,000 Islamic prayer sites in Turkey since taking power. The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs recently opened a large new mosque in Cologne, Germany, with a 1,200-person capacity and the tallest minaret in Europe. When the mosque was first proposed in 2007, concerned citizens launched an initiative to protest the mosque.

They did not want Cologne’s famous cathedral, the largest in Germany, to share the skyline with a mosque’s minarets, declaring, “We want the cathedral here, not minarets.” But the Muslim group went ahead with construction of the mosque, and it was soon reported that Germany’s Muslim community planned to more than double the number of mosques in the country over the next few years.

Read more at: WorldNetDaily (WND)