Heiligenkreuz Abbey has a New Superior, but Not a New Abbot

HEILIGENKREUZ ABBEY, AUSTRIA — The Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, in Lower Austria, has a new superior.

This morning, Thursday, 17 September, the 84 monks entitled to vote elected Rev. Fr. Simeon Wester, O.Cist., as administrator of the community for the next three years.

Fr. Wester succeeds Fr. Maximilian Heim, who stepped down from the leadership as the abbot of Heiligenkreuz Abbey effective 14 September, officially for health reasons.

Fr. Wester was not elected abbot. The Holy See had in fact determined that, at the conclusion of Heim’s term, the community would not proceed with the election of the 69th Abbot of Heiligenkreuz, but would instead choose an administrator whose mandate would be limited to three years. This had already emerged in August, when it was announced that the conventual chapter would not be permitted to proceed with the customary abbatial election. According to Italian blog Silere non possum, they had revealed some of the details.

Thursday’s vote came after three days of preparation. Presiding over the election was Fr. Pius Maurer, the controversial Abbot President of the Austrian Cistercian Congregation.

On 21 May, when receiving the moderators of ecclesial movements, Leo XIV had stressed the need to guarantee free elections and genuine turnover in positions of governance within lay associations. A principle which, all the more so, should also find application in monastic communities.

At Heiligenkreuz, however, Rome prevented the monks from electing their own abbot and imposed a transitional solution, directly intervening in the governing structure of a large and growing community.

Fr. Heim, who is now the abbot emeritus, had been elected by the conventual chapter in February 2011 and had led Heiligenkreuz Abbey for fifteen years; from 2016 to 2025, he also served as President of the Austrian Cistercian Congregation.

The abbey, together with its dependent communities, numbers more than one hundred monks and is one of the largest and best-known Cistercian institutions in the German-speaking world.