Pascal Wintzer

Pascal Jean Marcel Wintzer (born 18 December 1959) is a French prelate of the Catholic Church who has been archbishop of Sens since 2024. He was the archbishop of Poitiers from 2012 to 2024, after serving as apostolic administrator there for a year and as an auxiliary bishop from 2007 to 2011.

He was, at the time he took each rank, the youngest bishop and the youngest archbishop in France.

Biography Wintzer was born on 18 December 1959 in Rouen. After elementary and classical studies at the Saint-Évode Choir School attached to Rouen Cathedral and at the Jean-Baptiste de la Salle Institute, he studied for a year at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rouen-Mont-Saint-Aignan. Beginning in 1979 he studied at the seminary of Paray-le-Monial and the Saint-Sulpice Seminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux. He earned his licentiate in theology from the Faculty of Theology of the Institut Catholique de Paris. He was ordained a priest in Rouen on 27 June 1987 He received his episcopal consecration on 19 May 2007 Within the French Episcopal Conference he became president of the Faith and Culture Observatory,

In March 2019, he became the first from the French Catholic hierarchy to support the idea of ordaining married men. Wintzer explained that ordaining married men would help the clergy to bring them back to "ordinary humanity", and saw it as a helpful tool in combating sexual abuse that exists among the parts of the Catholic clergy.

On 6 August 2024, Pope Francis transferred him to the Archdiocese of Sens. He was installed there on 6 October.