(ZENIT News / Brussels, 06.25.2025).- A case out of Belgium has stirred a quiet but consequential legal debate at the intersection of faith, memory, and privacy rights in the digital age. At the center is a baptism — and the question of whether a person can erase all trace of it.
The Brussels Court of Appeal has referred to the European Court of Justice a case that may define how far the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) extends into religious life. The issue is whether the Catholic Church’s refusal to delete baptismal records, even when requested by the individual concerned, violates EU privacy law.
Baptismal records, typically stored in handwritten registers in local parishes, document not only religious initiation but also personal data. Historically, those who left the Church could request an annotation beside their name indicating “formal defection from the faith,” but the original record would remain. The Church has always maintained these are not merely administrative notes — they represent historical facts, and as such, are immutable.
That practice is now being challenged. In late 2023, an individual in the Diocese of Ghent demanded that all traces of their baptism be erased, not just annotated. The diocese refused. The matter has now become a legal test case with implications beyond Belgium.
Alessandro Calcagno, a canon lawyer and deputy secretary general of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), explains the Church’s position: “The sacramental record is not a mailing list, it is a historical document. You may leave the faith, but the fact that you were baptized remains. You cannot ‘un-baptize’ yourself.”
The Vatican, through its Dicastery for Legislative Texts, issued a clarifying note in April stating that canon law permits no alteration or deletion of entries in baptismal registers, except to correct transcription errors. “The purpose of this register is to provide legal and historical certainty about the celebration of sacraments,” the statement read.
At the heart of the debate lies a conflict between two understandings of personhood: one rooted in modern data privacy and the other embedded in Catholic theology and archival tradition, where sacraments leave an indelible spiritual mark, mirrored in an equally permanent record.
While previous national court decisions dating back to 1995 have largely sided with the Church’s reasoning, the GDPR, enacted in 2018, introduced new standards. Under the regulation, individuals have a “right to erasure” — often called the “right to be forgotten” — in many circumstances involving the handling of personal data.
But does a baptismal record qualify? Religious institutions do enjoy certain exemptions under the GDPR, particularly when it comes to internal administration and doctrinal matters. Yet privacy advocates argue that when a person no longer belongs to the faith and requests complete disassociation, their rights under EU law should prevail.
The case also unfolds against a backdrop of growing dissatisfaction in parts of Europe with institutional religion. In Belgium alone, over 1,200 people formally asked to be removed from Church records in 2023, a trend attributed in part to outrage over the Church’s handling of abuse cases. The numbers are not massive, but they are symbolically potent — a visible crack in the edifice of institutional memory.
Pope Leo XIV is reportedly following the case closely. The Vatican sees it not just as a legal matter but as a challenge to the sacramental logic that underpins Catholic identity. COMECE, which works closely with EU institutions, has coordinated legal and theological responses on behalf of the Holy See.
The European Court of Justice will not be asked to decide whether baptism has spiritual significance — only whether retaining its records without consent infringes the data rights of former believers. But the ruling could carry wide consequences: for Church record-keeping, for the autonomy of religious institutions, and for the scope of European privacy law in deeply personal, and deeply historical, matters.
For now, the name in the baptismal book remains — flanked by a note, perhaps, but not erased. Whether that will remain true under EU law is a question the Church, and many of its former members, now await with great interest.
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