Austrian bishops’ conference urged to appoint lay general secretary

Austria’s largest Catholic women’s organization urged the country’s bishops Tuesday to open the role of bishops’ conference general secretary to lay people.

Caption: German bishops with bishops’ conference general secretary Beate Gilles, at the 2025 fall plenary assembly in Fulda. Credit: Deutsche Bischofskonferenz / Ralph Sondermann.

The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement called Sept. 15 for the statutes of the Austrian bishops’ conference to be amended so the office holder is no longer required to be a priest or bishop.

Angelika Ritter-Grepl, the group’s chairwoman, said: “It is time for the bishops’ conference to amend its own statutes so that this important office can also be held by lay people — both women and men.”

The appeal was prompted by the announcement that Fr. Peter Schipka, the general secretary of the Austrian bishops’ conference since 2011, will step down in November. Schipka chose to resign two years before the expiration of his latest six-year term to serve as a professor of education.

The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement noted that canon law does not require a bishops’ conference general secretary — who plays an administrative and coordinating role within a national bishops’ conference —