Church leavers could claim a right to erase baptismal data, EU adviser says

An EU court adviser said leaving the Catholic Church could bring a right to erase personal data from baptismal records, unless the Church showed compelling reasons to keep it.(CN) — Leaving the Catholic Church could mean having personal details erased from its baptismal records, an adviser to the EU’s top court said Thursday.Advocate General Laila Medina delivered her nonbinding opinion to the Court of Justice of the European Union after the Diocese of Ghent challenged an order to erase a Belgian man’s baptismal data. A Brussels appeals court asked how to balance his privacy rights against the Church’s religious freedom.EU privacy law covers paper baptismal registers, Medina concluded. Adults baptized as children could seek erasure for reasons specific to their circumstances, unless the Church showed compelling grounds outweighing their rights.Keeping records to administer sacraments properly could qualify, she said, but neither side had an automatic trump card. The national court had to weigh Church autonomy against the individual’s reasons for seeking erasure and the consequences of refusal.Medina questioned the need to keep this man’s details: His return to the Church appeared unlikely, and correspondence about erasure could help prove his baptism if needed.Sophie van Bijsterveld, professor of religion, law and society at Radboud University, welcomed the recognition of Church autonomy but feared that weighing personal reasons and emotional distress could undermine the records’ integrity. “Hopefully, the Court will distance itself from this approach,” she said.The man, identified as JM, was baptized in Ghent’s Bijloke parish in June 1955. Almost 66 years later, he asked the diocese to remove references to him from its records. It noted his departure but left his details readable. He complained to Belgium’s Data Protection Authority, which ordered erasure in December 2023.Catholic doctrine treats baptism as a once-only sacrament that opens the way to others. The authority questioned whether separate parish books could prevent repeat baptisms.Koen Gorissen, chair of the authority defending that order, said: “In my view, the attention paid to the right to self-determination is particularly important: Where a person considers that the processing of their personal data in a baptismal register may have emotional consequences for them, the Church must take this into account when balancing the rights and interests at stake.”Where erasure was required, Medina said, a departure note or readable crossing-out would not suffice. Opaque stickers could conceal identifying details without cutting pages. She rejected the diocese’s objection that deletion falsified history.“The logic underlying Bisdom Gent’s argument would imply that almost any erasure of personal data would result in the falsification of an event that has occurred in the past,” she wrote.Alessandro Calcagno, legal adviser on fundamental rights at the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, warned of legal uncertainty if departure notes no longer sufficed. “Furthermore, erasing the name of the baptized person from the baptismal record entirely deprives the registration of any meaning, value or purpose,” he said.Montserrat Gas Aixendri, professor of ecclesiastical law at the International University of Catalonia, called Medina’s approach a careful attempt to balance competing rights but favored restricting access over obscuring names. “A baptismal register is not simply a list of current members,” she said, stressing its role in later sacraments and its significance for parents, godparents and spouses.Medina allowed room to retain data for public-interest archives or historical research, subject to safeguards. The national court needed to consider whether other sources or anonymized records could meet researchers’ needs.“The opinion is very positive for people who have been baptized in the Catholic Church and wish their personal data to be erased from the baptismal register,” said Frederic Debusseré, a Timelex partner who represented another individual seeking erasure and three secular groups. He said the Church could not rely on the archiving exception in Belgium: No law required it to preserve the records, and they were closed to the public.Piotr Kroczek, professor of canon law at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, cautioned against applying the opinion uniformly across Europe. He pointed to a GDPR provision allowing churches with preexisting data protection systems to keep their own rules under certain conditions, arguing that in Poland, Germany and Slovakia, Catholic religious matters can fall outside the GDPR and national courts’ jurisdiction. Medina mentioned the provision only in passing without analyzing its implications, he noted. “In the Catholic Church, canon law and doctrine are closely linked,” he said.Geert De Cubber declined comment for the Diocese of Ghent. “The conclusion is part of a much longer and larger procedure, which is still ongoing,” he said.The EU court will have the final say on what EU law requires. The Belgian court will then decide JM’s request. He has left the Church. Whether his personal details can follow remains open.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads