Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn, OP (German: [ˈkrɪstɔf ˈʃøːnbɔrn];[1] born 22 January 1945) is a Bohemian-born Austrian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Vienna from 1995 until 2025.

Several members of the Schönborn family held high offices in the Catholic Church and, since the 17th century, the Holy Roman Empire, including several prince-bishops, cardinals and ecclesiastical prince-electors.

[4] Following the German withdrawal from Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II, Bohemia's German-speaking population, especially the nobility, was persecuted by the new rulers, first by Edvard Beneš' post-war nationalist government and then by the new Stalinist regime, and the family fled to Austria in 1945.

[9] In addition to his native German, Schönborn is fluent in French and Italian, and proficient in English, Spanish and Latin.

Schönborn also attended the Catholic Institute of Paris for further theological work, before studying Slavic and Byzantine Christianity at the Sorbonne.

He was created cardinal priest of Gesù Divin Lavoratore by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 1998.

Schönborn presided over the Funeral of Otto von Habsburg, former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, in St. Stephen's Cathedral on 16 July 2011.

[22] On 1 December 2017, Schönborn presided over an interconfessional prayer service entitled Mozart Requiem in his cathedral church for World AIDS Day.

For a long while the Church's principle of forgiveness was falsely interpreted and was in favour of those responsible and not the victims," while praising Pope Benedict XVI for having pushed for sex abuse inquiries when he was a Cardinal.

Schönborn has earned much recognition[25] for his handling of the abuse scandal surrounding his predecessor as Vienna Archbishop Hans Hermann Groër, who was removed from office in 1995.

[10] In 2010, he explained that the future Pope Benedict XVI had long pressed for a full investigation of the case, but met resistance in the Vatican at the time.

[30] Cardinal Schönborn met with the supporters of the Pfarrer Initiative, but in June 2012 he publicly reaffirmed the official position of the Vatican on the issues raised by the dissident group and directed that no priest expressing support for the "Call to Disobedience" be allowed to hold any administrative post in the Austrian Catholic Church.

[31] In September 2012 Schönborn again "backed celibacy for priests, limiting ordination to men and preserving marriage as a life-long commitment" and reiterated a warning to the dissident clergy that they faced serious consequences if they continued to advocate disobedience to the Vatican.

"[33] On 1 December 2018, he allowed a controversial rock performance to take place in St. Stephen Cathedral to raise money for HIV patients.

[34][35] The event was held to benefit the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard, a hospice in South Africa run by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta for people dying of AIDS.

[36] The previous year, Schönborn, the Order of Malta, and Gery Keszler's LGBT Life Ball organized a Mass to remember World Aids Day.

"[49] In 2024, when asked about the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes that placed restrictions on use of the Tridentine Mass, Schönborn said that he hoped that the “new generation” might “easily” move from the 'TLM to modern movements and “prayer groups” such as the Emmanuel Community, adding “Let us accept that Francis has his reasons for closing the doors again, at least partially, just as we have accepted that Benedict XVI had his reasons for opening them.

Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.The director of the Vatican Observatory, George Coyne, SJ, criticized Schönborn's view and pointed to Pope John Paul II's declaration that "evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis" [52] and Catholic physicist Stephen Barr wrote a critique[53] which evoked several replies, including a lengthy one from Schönborn.

[54] In April 2012, the election of a young gay man, who was living in a registered same-sex partnership, to a pastoral council in Vienna was vetoed by the parish priest.

He later advised in a homily that priests must apply a pastoral approach that is "neither rigorist nor lax" in counselling Catholics who "don't live according to [God's] master plan".

[55] On 14 April 2019, Schönborn expressed openness to the possibility of married men being ordained to the priesthood (something which already occurs in the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Anglican ordinariate), while maintaining clerical celibacy as normative.

[60][61][62] On 21 January 2020, the Archdiocese of Vienna announced that Pope Francis would not accept Schönborn's resignation when he turned 75, but only when it was ready to name his successor.