EU to rule on forcing Catholic Church to erase baptismal records

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EU to rule on forcing Catholic Church to erase baptismal records

The European bishops insist that the EU has no right to interfere with baptismal registers.

Sep 7, 2026
LUXEMBOURG CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The EU’s top court may force the Diocese of Ghent to erase baptismal records at the request of individuals under EU data-protection law.

The Court of Justice of the European Union is considering a case involving the Diocese of Ghent in Belgium and a dispute over whether a person who requested “debaptism” has a right under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to have all personal information removed from the Church’s baptismal register.

“The baptismal register is the fundamental basis for establishing the juridical status of the person in the internal legal order of the Church,” the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union stated. “Requiring the Catholic Church to erase the data contained in it, thereby intervening directly in its organization, would constitute a serious infringement upon Church autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.”

The case is named C-12/25 Bisdom Gent. It began on March 25, 2021, when an individual asked the Diocese of Ghent to remove his or her personal information from all diocesan files, including the baptismal register, invoking the GDPR.

On April 2, 2021, the diocese did not delete the baptismal entry. Instead, it added an annotation stating that the person “left the Church” on a certain date, while two diagonal lines were drawn across the entry.

The individual subsequently maintained that the information should be completely erased and complained to Belgium’s Data Protection Authority. On December 19, 2023, the authority ordered the Diocese of Ghent to comply with the request, but the diocese appealed.

According to the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, the Ghent annotation was “not ideal” and does not represent the practice used by the Church throughout the other EU member states. Nevertheless, the European bishops insist that the EU has no right to interfere with baptismal registers.

The main point of contention is the characterization of baptismal registers as mere membership lists. The bishops explicitly referred to a Note issued by the Dicastery for Legislative Texts on April 7, 2025. This Note recalls that “Canon Law does not allow modifying or deleting entries made in the Baptismal Register” except to correct transcription errors, because the register “represents the objective record of sacramental actions, or actions related to the sacraments, historically carried out by the Church”.

It further explains that “if the Church did not have these general norms on the obligatory registration of Baptism, it would not be possible for the Church itself to carry out sacramental activity, since the valid reception of the sacraments requires certainty about the reception of Baptism”. A minister “cannot permit the celebration of other sacraments if the reception of Baptism is not certified”.

For this reason, the Note recalls that “the Baptism Register is not a list of members, but a record of baptisms that have taken place. Since its sole purpose is to attest to an ecclesial historical ‘fact’, it does not aim to certify the religious faith of individuals or whether a person is a member of the Church.”

For these reasons, according to the European bishops, the possible EU decision would imply that “the nature and character of baptismal registers were to be re-defined by a civil court in a way that contradicts the definition upheld by the Church, on the basis of its self-understanding, including through its highest authorities.”

“In some sense, erasure from baptismal registers would impose on the Church as a whole a concept of ‘membership’ that does not belong to it or to its legal order,” the bishops continued.

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The bishops’ statement also insists that the secular nature of the State means not only that the Church must not interfere in politics, but also that “the State must not interfere in Church affairs.” They warn that no government – “least of all the European Union” – can dictate the Church’s internal rules.

The bishops say that forcing the erasure of baptismal records could “mislead the faithful, and even more seriously, non-believers,” into thinking that baptism is repeatable or optional – an idea they call an “infringement on the substance of the sacrament.”

Finally, they argue that the rights of those who wish to leave the Church cannot extend to reshaping Catholic theology: requiring the Church to treat baptismal registers as a mere “list of members” would mean altering not only administrative procedures but “theological reflection itself,” which they say is protected by Church autonomy. The European bishops also stress that the case “goes beyond data protection” and concerns the very space EU law leaves for Churches to live and organize their faith freely.

In traditional Catholic doctrine, Baptism is the sacrament that removes original sin inherited from our first parents, both in its guilt and its spiritual effects, including the loss of grace. Through this sacrament, the soul is purified and reborn in divine life. Baptism also incorporates the person into the Mystical Body of Christ, namely the Catholic Church, making him or her a living member of the Church. For this reason, it is considered the necessary condition for receiving all other sacraments, since participation in the sacramental life presupposes the new birth conferred by Baptism.