Bamberg Archbishop Ludwig Schick has resigned. Pope Francis accepted his resignation, the Holy See announced on Tuesday. This means that there are two vacant bishoprics in Germany, Bamberg and Paderborn.
In general, bishops offer their resignation to the head of the Catholic Church after the age of 75. The 73-year-old Schick was in the Vatican for an audience with Francis at the end of April. Schick’s departure came as a surprise to some observers. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, paid tribute to Schick’s many years of work. He had been a member of the DBK for 24 years.
“You look back on a long and eventful time,” wrote Bätzing in a letter to the 73-year-old. “You were a member of the German Bishops’ Conference for almost a quarter of a century and made a committed contribution, played a key role in shaping debates and were our safe authority in all questions of ecclesiastical law.”
Schick was considered one of the more liberal bishops in the DBK. Schick enriched the bishops’ conference with expertise and subtle humor, precision and the courageous demand, with ideas and perspectives. Bätzing expressly thanked him for going along with the reform process of the synodal path.
With his resignation, Schick says he wants to leave upcoming important decisions and course setting to a younger successor. “I have fulfilled and completed my duties in the archdiocese,” wrote the 73-year-old in a letter to the faithful of his diocese, which was published on the archdiocese’s website on Tuesday. “From autumn 2022 there will be new decisions and projects that will far exceed the two years until my 75th birthday.”
For reasons of age, Schick, who was born in Marburg in 1949, no longer took up the post of chairman of the World Church Commission of the German Bishops’ Conference last year, which he had chaired since 2006.
Schick was appointed auxiliary bishop in Fulda in 1998, and just four years later the then Pope John Paul II made him archbishop of Bamberg. Within the DBK he was also a member of the pastoral commission and representative for men’s pastoral care.
