A divorced woman once described as "a cross between Mother Teresa and Demi Moore" was Wednesday elected head of Germany's Protestant church, the first woman to hold the post.
Margot Kaessmann, 51, received 132 of the 142 votes cast at the church's general assembly in Ulm, southern Germany. She now leads 25 million faithful across the country.
"Trusting in God's help, I accept the vote," she said.
Kaessmann, who was elected for a six-year term, was the only candidate for the post.
Kaessmann is known as an outspoken, tolerant and humorous leader, having once said: “Crabby Christians are a contradiction in themselves.”
In 2006 the mother of four was diagnosed with breast cancer, but has since recovered.
She also divorced her husband of 26 years in 2007, a decision that sparked initial reactions varying from “open criticism to the point of malice, contempt and hatred,” as she described it in a memoir published last September.
She was Germany's youngest bishop when she was consecrated in 1999 and has since survived an operation to remove breast cancer.
In 2003, the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily reported that she was known within the organisation as a "mixture of Mother Teresa and Demi Moore."