The Bishop of Hildesheim, Heiner Wilmer, has been elected as the new chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference. The conference announced the decision on Tuesday in Würzburg, naming him successor to Bishop Georg Bätzing. In his new role, Wilmer will represent the church’s organization to the outside for the next six years.
Wilmer was born in 1961 in Schapen, Emsland. He entered the Society of the Holy Heart of Jesus in August 1980 and made his perpetual profession in 1985. On 31 May 1987 he was ordained a priest in Freiburg. From 1987 to 1993 he studied in Rome and Freiburg, after which he served as a referendary and teacher in Meppen, Vechta, and the Bronx in New York. He later became headmaster of the Leoninum Gymnasium in Hahndorf. Between 2007 and 2015 Wilmer was provincial superior of the German province of the Society of the Holy Heart of Jesus in Bonn, and from 2015 to 2018 he served as general superior of the same order in Rome.
Pope Francis appointed Wilmer the 71st Bishop of Hildesheim on 6 April 2018; he was consecrated on 1 September 2018 and formally took office. Within the German Bishops’ Conference he has chaired the Commission for Social and Societal Issues since September 2021 and led the German Commission Justitia et Pax from 2019 to 2024.
As chairman, Wilmer functions as the Conference’s external spokesperson, binding him to the decisions of the Plenary Assembly and the Standing Committee. If no such decision exists on a particular matter, he is obliged to seek a new resolution or, at a minimum, to attain agreement with the chairman of the relevant commission. In urgent cases he may issue statements on his own, and he briefed Conference members accordingly. The vice‑chairman assumes the chairman’s duties if the chairman is legitimately prevented from acting or is impeded from doing so.
