Reverend Patrick Streiff, a native of Switzerland and theologically educated at the United Methodist Seminary in Reutlingen – Germany, and holder of a doctorate from the University of Bern has been elected as a new bishop to lead the United Methodist Church’s Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe which includes fourteen countries in Europe and North Africa.

Ordained to the ministry in 1984, he has been the pastor of Congregations in Lausanne, Neuchatel and Biel, Switzerland. He has been in charge of the Methodist Centre for Theological Education in France, located in Lausanne and also a lecturer on modern church history at the Theological Faculty of the University of Lausanne.

Patrick Streiff has also worked on a curriculum for French-speaking pastors in West Africa, and belongs to a team exploring the possibility of a French-language United Methodist hymnal. He has assisted the mission board on a Book of Discipline (church law) for Cambodia.

Countries covered by the United Methodist Church in Central and Southern Europe are Albania, Algeria, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Slovak Republic, Serbia-Montenegro, France and Tunisia.

Streiff is a director of United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry with which he has a very close relationship as well as to the denomination’s Board of Global Ministries.

The new bishop of Europe United Methodists was elected to a four-year term on the second ballot during the central conference meeting and gained 66 of possible 73 votes. Rev. Patrick Striffe, 49, was consecrated during the service at Bern Cathedral in Switzerland on April 17 and became a successor of late Bishop Heinrich Bolleter, who will formally retire in May 2006.