However, the usual distribution of roles in this case is upside down: the Free State is the norm in the Catholic Church and the rest of the Federal Republic is the exception.
The Bavarians are the Centralists, the others the federalists.
For the Free State, a separate state church treaty, the Bavarian Concordat of 29, still applies today.
And this differs considerably from the other two relevant treaties for Germany, especially in the case of bishops’ appointments: the Prussian and Badian Concordats.
Bavaria close to the world church standard
In the seven Bavarian dioceses, the Pope – unlike in Germany – has largely a free hand in the selection of new diocese leaders. Thus, the situation here corresponds almost to the world church standard.
The cathedral chapters, on the other hand, have only a very limited right of proposal in Bavaria in the case of bishops' appointments. Unlike, for example, the cathedral chapters in Cologne or Freiburg, the Augsburg Cathedral chapter could not select a candidate from a list of three of the Vatican, which then had to be confirmed by the Pope.
The Bavarian cathedral chapters can only submit a list of candidates suitable from their point of view to the Vatican. Other lists, as elsewhere, send in the bishops of neighboring dioceses belonging to a church province.
The fact that the Pope today has a largely free hand in the Free State owes it to the Rome faithfulness of the Bavarian bishops in the Weimar Republic. After the revolution had swept away the monarchies in Germany in 1918, the relationship between church and state had to be reorganized.
In Bavaria, the old Concordat of 1817 had stipulated that the king nominate the bishops, as was customary in other Catholic monarchies. The question now was whether this right should be entitled to the Pope alone after the omission of the monarchy, or the cathedral chapters, as it has since the 19th. century was regulated in Prussia. Because the Hohenzollern Dynasty was evangelical, Rome had not wanted to grant her a right of nomination for bishops.
However, because the Hohenzollerns did not want to give Rome sole responsibility for bishops’ appointments, it had been agreed as a compromise that the cathedral chapters would nominate the bishops.
When the Weimar Republic was concerned about the new regulation of the bishop's appointments, out-of-the-point cathedral chapters had called on the Vatican with the support of the chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Wrocław Archbishop Adolf Bertram, to maintain the free bishops' elections through the cathedral chapters.
However, this demand contradicted the new church law, which came into force in 1917. The so-called Codex Iuris Canonici provided for the free appointment of the bishops by the Pope.
The Bavarian bishops sided with church law and advocated a strong role for the pope in the bishops’ appointments. Some Bavarian cathedral capitulars did not want to accept this and tried to enforce a free right to vote for bishops of the cathedral chapters without the knowledge of their bishops.
However, the Bavarian bishops successfully prevented this with the help of the Apostolic Nuncio in Bavaria, Eugenio Pacelli, the later Pope Pius XII (1939–1958).
Not least because a concordat with the German Reich was not in sight, Bavaria decided to start its own contract negotiations with the Vatican.
The Bavarian Concordat applies not only to the seven Bavarian dioceses of Munich and Freising, Passau, Eichstätt, Augsburg, Würzburg, Bamberg and Regensburg, but also to a non-Bavarian diocese: the Diocese of Speyer. This belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria when the first Concordat was concluded in 1817. The contracting parties maintained this scope in 1924.
Short sedis-vacancies, few Bavarian native plants
If one compares the bishops' appointments in Bavaria with those in other dioceses, two things stand out above all: First, the bishop's chairs are usually vacant shorter than in dioceses, for which the Prussian or Baden Concordat applies.
In the case of Augsburg, it took almost seven months in 2020 for Bertram Meier to be appointed a successor to Konrad Zdarsa, who resigned in July 2019 for reasons of age – in Würzburg it was only five months until Franz Jung was appointed successor to Friedhelm Hofmann in February 2018. And secondly, in Bavaria, the bishops are significantly less likely to become bishops. In the diocese of Augsburg, for example, there have been only two since the conclusion of the Bavarian Concordat, incumbents Meier and Josef Stimpfle (1963–1992). In other Bavarian dioceses, too, significantly fewer locals came to the fore than outside Bavaria.
However, the fact that a Bavarian bishop even became pope in 2005 has nothing to do with the Bavarian Concordat. Or rather, almost nothing. Joseph Ratzinger was born on 29. June 1951 by the Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber ordained a priest, the cardinal who was instrumental in the formation of the Bavarian Concordat 27 years earlier.