The Swiss bishops elected Bishop Markus Büchel of St Gallen to be the next president of the Swiss bishops' conference, replacing Bishop Norbert Brunner in January.
At a press conference Bishop Büchel said that it was important to be in agreement with church doctrine as far as communion for remarried divorcees and lay sermons were concerned.
But he added: "Dioceses differ as to how the Church should react to developments in society and whether one should principally consider the increasing secularisation negatively and therefore take a Draconian course, or if one should take a neutral stance towards social developments and then quite pragmatically see if as a Church we can make the best of it."