Two women and two men are applying to succeed Bavarian Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. According to information from the Evangelical Press Service, the Landshut dean Nina Lubomierski, 47, the director of the Mission Eine Welt partnership center, Gabriele Hoerschelmann, 54, the Munich regional bishop Christian Kopp, 58, and the Windsbach dean Klaus Schlicker are candidates for the election on March 27 in Munich , 55. First the Bayerischer Rundfunk published the names of the four candidates on Monday. The 62-year-old Bedford-Strohm will be dismissed in October after twelve years as bishop.
Since September, the former council chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has been the honorary chairman of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), which represents around 580 million Christians from the Evangelical, Anglican and Orthodox churches. The successor in office is elected by the state synod. There is no official confirmation of the list yet. A church spokesman did not want to comment on the list of names and pointed out that the preparation of the bishop election is a matter for the synod. Its president, Annekathrin Preidel, said they had committed themselves to “strict confidentiality”. The election preparation committee is only to decide on the final list of names on Friday.
According to the law, the Bavarian state government, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (VELKD) must approve the list of candidates. Some of this is still pending. Nina Lubomierski was born in Hamburg and has been the dean in Landshut, Lower Bavaria, since May 2020. Since 2015, Gabriele Hoerschelmann has shared the position of director and thus the management of the regional church partnership center Mission Eine Welt in Neuendettelsau with her husband Hanns. Since the end of 2019, Christian Kopp has been regional bishop in the second-largest church district in the Bavarian state church in terms of congregation members. The fourth candidate, Klaus Schlicker, has been the dean of Windsbach in west-central Franconia, the home of the world-famous boys’ choir, since 2012.
According to epd information, the regional church originally wanted to make the names of the candidates public next weekend (January 28/29). First of all, the members of the synod should be informed after the meeting of the election preparation committee. A total of 26 people were nominated for the election.