Heiner Wilmer

Heiner Wilmer was born on 9 April 1961 in Schapen, in the Emsland region. In August 1980 he entered the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Dehonians) and made his perpetual profession in 1985. He was ordained a priest in Freiburg on 31 May 1987. He studied in Rome and Freiburg, where he earned a doctorate in fundamental theology in 1991. From 1993 to 2007 he worked in education: as a teacher in Meppen and Vechta, then at Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx, New York, and from 1998 to 2007 as headmaster of the Gymnasium Leoninum in Handrup. From 2007 to 2015 he was Provincial of the German province of the Dehonians in Bonn, and from 2015 to 2018 Superior General of the congregation in Rome. On 6 April 2018 Pope Francis appointed him the 71st Bishop of Hildesheim; he was ordained bishop and installed on 1 September 2018. In the German Bishops' Conference he has chaired the Commission for Social and Societal Questions since September 2021, and he chaired the German Commission Justitia et Pax from 2019 to 2024. On 24 February 2026 he was elected Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, succeeding Georg Bätzing. On 26 March 2026 Pope Leo XIV appointed him Bishop of Münster; he took office as the 77th Bishop of Münster on 21 June 2026.