Fearing deportation, an increasing number of refugees in Germany are approaching churches for asylum, the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) told the Funke Media Group in comments released on Sunday.
“The number of requests has risen significantly in many places as a result of increased pressure to deport, with some requests more than quadrupling,” an EKD spokeswoman told dpa.
For decades, churches in Germany have given temporary shelter to people fleeing persecution, discrimination, torture and even death back in their home countries.
Many asylum seekers who have been asked to leave Germany seek shelter in churches in order to wait out their departure deadlines. Inside a church, they are out of reach of the police.
The EKD spokeswoman said the church does not keep a central record of asylum cases and nationwide statistics on applications in individual parishes are not available.
The EKD’s estimates are based instead on selective feedback from individual regional churches.
Church asylum can often not be granted due to the high demand, leaving people unprotected, the spokeswoman said.
Dietlind Jochims, chairwoman of the Ecumenical Federal Association for Church Asylum, also told the Funke Media Group that growing fear among people with uncertain residence status in Germany is leading to a sharp rise in requests for church protection.
According to Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Protestant, Catholic and independent churches recorded a total of 617 cases of church asylum in the first quarter of 2025.
In the same period last year, there were 604 cases, and a total of 2,386 cases for the whole of 2024.