Before World War II, there were 80 churches and chapels of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union in the Gdańsk diocese. After the war, Catholics took over 48 churches, the rest were demolished, turned into secular objects or taken over by other religious communities. In Gdańsk alone there were 27 church buildings, 16 of which were taken over by the Catholic Church. Many of these churches were originally Catholic and became Protestant during the Reformation. According to the law in force in Poland, Protestant religious buildings in Gdańsk were the property of the state until the early 1970s, while the Catholic Church remained only their administrator and user. They became the property of the church only after 1970. As a result of the war, the national and religious situation in Gdańsk changed significantly. The German population left the city or was displaced and was replaced by the mostly Catholic Polish population. The pastoral needs of Christians could only be met by using the buildings of Protestant churches. In 1945, most of these church buildings were destroyed or severely damaged and were therefore unusable. Catholic Christians rebuilt or renovated them, thus saving the religious buildings. The pastoral needs of the few Protestant Christians in the Gdańsk diocese were met after 1945. The faithful of the Protestant and Reformed denominations have their church in Park Południowy in Sopot.