Herwig Gössl

Herwig Gössl
Archbishop of Bamberg
Gössl in 2023
Church	Roman Catholic
Archdiocese	Bamberg
Appointed	9 December 2023
Predecessor	Ludwig Schick
Orders
Ordination	1993 by Elmar Maria Kredel
Personal details
Born	1967 (age 56–57) Munich, Bavaria, West Germany
Previous post(s)	Auxiliary Bishop of Bamberg (2014–2023)
Education	Catholic Seminary Bamberg
Motto	tu solus dominus ('You alone are the lord')
Coat of arms

Herwig Gössl (born 1967) is a German clergyman of the Catholic Church who has served as the Archbishop of Bamberg since 2023. A native of Munich, he held several appointments in the same archdiocese, including as the vice-rector of its seminary, before becoming an auxiliary bishop in 2014. After the resignation as archbishop of Ludwig Schick in 2022, Gössl initially led the archdiocese as a diocesan administrator.

Early life and education

Herwig Gössl was born in 1967 in Munich. He grew up in Nuremberg and attended the city's Melanchthon-Gymnasium. In 1986, having received his Abitur, he enrolled in the Catholic Seminary at Bamberg and was ordained a priest in 1993 by Elmar Maria Kredel, then the Archbishop of Bamberg.

Ecclesiastical career

Gössl's first appointment was as a chaplain at St Hedwig's Church in Bayreuth. In 1997, he became the parish priest for Hannberg and Weisendorf, two communities in the Deanery of Erlangen. In 2007, Ludwig Schick, the Archbishop of Bamberg, appointed Gössl as vice-rector of the Bamberg seminary, which he had attended as a student. A year later, he was appointed to the same position at the Catholic Seminary at Würzburg by Friedhelm Hofmann, the Bishop of Würzburg. In this role, he co-ordinated the educational activities of the dioceses of Bamberg and Würzburg.

In 2014, Gössl was made an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Bamberg. According to Christoph Renzikowski of Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur, a catholic news agency, the news of the appointment caused him "great shock" (German: "großen Schreck"). When Ludwig Schick resigned from the office of archbishop in November 2022, Gössl was elected diocesan administrator and led the Archdiocese of Bamberg during the resulting vacancy. On 9 December 2023, Pope Francis named Gössl the new Archbishop of Bamberg.

Theological positions

During the Synodal Way, a series of conferences involving both laity and clergy discussing paths towards reform of the Catholic Church in Germany, Gössl was part of the commission working on the church's ethics of sexuality. In this context, he suggested that, although catholic theology of sexuality had at times in the past gone too far, it was "wrong" (German: "falsch") to view it as responsible to view the church's teaching on sexuality as responsible for the incidents of sexual abuse of children under its tutelage. Along with a minority of bishops including Stefan Oster, the Bishop of Passau, Gössl rejected a fundamental document prepared by the commission due to disagreements with the wording including on the "tendency to abolish the bipolarity of genders" (German: "die Tendenz, die Bipolarität der Geschlechter aufzuheben"). However, he later welcomed the Fiducia supplicans declaration, which allowed Catholic clergy to bless homosexual couples, and criticised the Vatican's decision to continue labelling homosexuality as a 'grave sin'.

Bibliography

• "Lebenslauf". Erzbistum Bamberg (in German). Retrieved 2024-01-30.
• Renzikowski, Christopher (2023-12-09). "Hauslösung in Bamberg: Herwig Gössl wird neuer Erzbischof". katholisch.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-01-30.
• "Bamberg: Herwig Gössl wird neuer Erzbischof". Die Tagespost (in German). 2023-12-09. Retrieved 2024-01-30.
• "Vorstoß ohne Weiterentwicklung der Lehre". domradio.de (in German). 2024-01-05. Retrieved 2024-03-26.