New female bishop in Germany

In March, Ilse Junkermann of Stuttgart, Germany became the first woman bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM). After the third round of secret balloting, the church synod in Wittenberg elected the 51-year-old theologian by more than the required two-thirds majority.
Junkermann is the fourth woman bishop in the history of the Evangelical Church in Germany, after the present bishops Maria Jepsen from Hamburg and Margot Kässmann from Hannover, and Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter from Lübeck, who retired last year. The current bishops, Christoph Kähler (Eisenach) and Axel Noack (Magdeburg), will step down in July and Junkermann will officially begin her ten-year term as bishop on 29 August.

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