According to the Standard (Austrian newspaper) almost 88.000 people left the church in Austria during 2010. In 2009 there were around 53.000 people that left church.

So there has been an increase by around 64 percent.

As usual such increases often are related to "bad news" and this time it were of course the abuse scandals that were uncovered in the beginning of the year.

If you look at the numbers more closely you will however see that there is a longterm trend with increasing numbers of people leaving. Although the 88thousand are an extraordinary peak it should be expected that the era of traditional churches slowly comes to an end provided there is no new Christian movement caused by the religious/cultural problems between the west and the Muslim countries.

Interestingly the solution that (some of) the church come up with is to actually become more "humanistic". Down the article (which is in German) you will find them encourage the church (and the pope) to deal with problematic issues like sexuality, condoms etc. So basically the tactic is again:"make the religion more accommodated to the modern views so that people don't leave".