Sylvester Heereman van Zuydtwyck (born 10 September 1974) is the former

Vicar General A vicar general (previously, archdeacon) is the principal deputy of the bishop or archbishop of a diocese or an archdiocese for the exercise of administrative authority and possesses the title of local ordinary. As vicar of the bishop, the vica ...

of the Catholic congregation, the

Legion of Christ The Legionaries of Christ (in , abbreviated L.C.) is a Catholic Church, Roman Catholic religious congregation of pontifical right founded on January 3, 1941, by the Mexican Catholic priest Marcial Maciel. It belongs constitutively to the spiritua ...

Family

Heereman was born in

Bad Neustadt an der Saale Bad Neustadt an der Saale (, ), officially Bad Neustadt a.d.Saale and often simply called Bad Neustadt, is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany. It is the capital of the Rhön-Grabfeld district in Lower Franconia. It is situated on the rivers Fran ...

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, on 10 September 1974.

Seminary and priesthood

In 1994 Heereman entered the Legion's

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

in Germany. He was

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are Consecration in Christianity, consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the religious denomination, denominationa ...

on 23 December 2006. From 2007-11 he was the territorial director of Germany, and then Northern and Central Europe.

Vicar General of the Legion and Regnum Christi

On 16 February 2012 Heereman was named to his new post of Vicar General by

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to * Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae ***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...

Velasio de Paolis Velasio de Paolis, C.S., JCD, STL (19 September 1935 – 9 September 2017), was an Italian member of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo (Scalabrinians) and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was President of the Prefecture for the E ...

. The Vicar General is second in command after the General Director. He had replaced Father Luis Garza, who resigned to become territorial director of North America, and he was named after consulting the members of the

. As of 15 October 2012, Heereman assumed the responsibility for running the Legion until the convocation of a

General Chapter A chapter ( or ') is one of several bodies of clergy in Catholic, Old Catholic, Anglican, and Nordic Lutheran churches or their gatherings. Name The name derives from the habit of convening monks or canons for the reading of a chapter o ...

, as the former General Director,

Álvaro Corcuera Álvaro Corcuera Martínez del Río LC (22 July 1957 – 30 June 2014) was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest. He was the former General Director of the Catholic Order of the Legion of Christ, serving since January 2005. On October 15, 2012, he we ...

, was on sabbatical for health reasons. In two letters, dated 9–10 October, both Álvaro and Cardinal

Velasio De Paolis Velasio de Paolis, C.S., JCD, STL (19 September 1935 – 9 September 2017), was an Italian member of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo (Scalabrinians) and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was President of the Prefecture for the E ...

(the Legion's Papal delegate) announced the sabbatical.

References

1974 births People from Bad Neustadt an der Saale Legionaries of Christ 21st-century German Roman Catholic priests Living people {{Germany-RC-clergy-stub