The election of the president of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) this week ended in a contested vote once again, and as in 2020, the progressive Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen came up short. It was Bishop Heiner Wilmer of Hildesheim who stepped before journalists as the newly elected DBK president. Bishop Wilmer’s voting record at Synodal Way assemblies favored blessing same-sex unions and endorsed a text calling for a magisterial reassessment of homosexuality, arguing that same-sex sexuality, even in sexual acts, “is not a sin separating from God” and is not to be judged intrinsically disordered but evaluated according to certain values.
