On Feb. 24, Bishop Heiner Wilmer, SCJ, was elected as the president of the German Bishops’ Conference. He will serve a six-year term.
Bishop Wilmer, 64, was superior general of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians) when he was named by Pope Francis as bishop of Hildesheim, Germany in 2018.
He made his first profession with the SCJs in 1982 and was ordained a priest in 1987. Prior to his election as superior general in 2015, he was provincial superior of the German Province. As a young priest he spent a year in the United States, teaching German and history at the Jesuit’s Fordham Preparatory School in New York. Bishop Wilmer also spent three months in Caracas, Venezuela, doing catechesis in the city’s barrios, and four months in Toronto, serving as a chaplain at “L’Arche Daybreak,” a residential home for people with disabilities.
His studies have included French Philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and Fundamental Theology at the University of Freiburg, where he earned his doctorate. Bishop Wilmer is also an author of several books.
The photo of Bishop Wilmer is courtesy of the German Bishops’ Conference.
