Father Markus Scheifele (48) is a priest of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and was ordained in 2007. Over the past 14 years, he has worked at the Diocesan Youth Office – initially for five years in the altar server ministry, and subsequently as head of the Youth Office. At the same time, he served as parish priest in Esslingen am Neckar.

He is currently spending a sabbatical year in Rome at the Pontifical College of Priests at Campo Santo Teutonico – the very place where he spent a sabbatical in 2002/2003. Alongside this, he has been studying communication and behavioural psychology in transactional analysis at the Eric Berne Institute in Zurich for the past four years.