The Protection of Personal Data in the German Church

Abstract

With the Church Data Protection Act, the diocesan bishops of the German Bishops‘ Conference have created a comprehensive regulation of Church data-protection law in accordance with the European Data Protection Basic Regulation. A large part of the standards was taken over from this European regulation, to which some clarifications and regulations specific to the Church were added. Particular importance is attached to the establishment of a separate data-protection jurisdiction,
with which for the first time a multi-level Church administrative jurisdiction based on the diocesan level has been created.