Archbishop of Vienna in the context of "Roman Catholic Diocese of Linz"

The Catholic Church in Austria is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope in Rome. The Church's governing body in Austria is the Austrian Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of the two archbishops (Vienna and Salzburg), the bishops and the abbot of territorial abbey of Wettingen-Mehrerau. Nevertheless, each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Pope. The current president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The Austrian church is the largest Christian Confession of Austria, with 4.56 million members (49.6 % of the total Austrian population) in 2024.

For more than 50 years, however, the proportion of Catholics has decreased, primarily due to secularization and migration (from 89% in 1961 to under 50% in 2024). The number of Sunday churchgoers in 2023 was around 4.1 percent (as percentage of the total Austrian population that is 378,797 churchgoers out of a total population of 9,158,750).

Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn, OP (German: [ˈkrɪstɔf ˈʃøːnbɔrn]; born 22 January 1945) is a Bohemian-born Austrian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Vienna from 1995 until 2025. He was chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference from 1998 to 2020 and was made a cardinal in 1998. He is a member of the Dominican Order.

Schönborn is Grand Chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Austrian branch), of which he has been a member since 1961. He is also a member of the formerly sovereign House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church as prince-bishops, prince-electors and cardinals.

The Distinguished Order of the Golden Fleece (Spanish: Insigne Orden del Toisón de Oro, German: Orden vom Goldenen Vlies) is a Catholic order of chivalry founded in 1430 in Brugge by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to celebrate his marriage to Isabella of Portugal. Today, two branches of the order exist, namely the Spanish Fleece and the Austrian Fleece; the current grand masters are King Felipe VI of Spain and Karl von Habsburg, head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, respectively. The Grand Chaplain of the Austrian branch is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna.

The separation of the two existing branches took place as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession of 1701–1714. The grand master of the order, Charles II of Spain (a Habsburg), had died childless in 1700, and so the right to succeed to the throne of Spain (and incidentally to become the Sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece) initiated a continental conflict. On one hand, Charles, brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I, claimed the Spanish crown as an agnatic member of the House of Habsburg, which had inherited the Burgundian titles and had held the Spanish throne for almost two centuries. However, the late king of Spain had named Philip of Bourbon, his sister's grandchild, as his successor in his will. After the conclusion of the war in 1714, the European powers recognized Philip of Bourbon as King of Spain, but the old Burgundian Habsburg territories became the Austrian Netherlands (1714–1797), and with them went the Treasure of the Order and its archive. The two dynasties, the Bourbons of Spain and the Habsburgs of Austria, have ever since continued heading the separate orders of the Golden Fleece.

St. Stephen's Cathedral (German: Stephansdom [ˈʃ͡tɛfansˌdoːm]) is a Roman Catholic church in Vienna, Austria, and the mother church of the Archdiocese of Vienna. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn.

The current Romanesque and Gothic form of the cathedral, seen today in the Stephansplatz, was largely initiated by Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) and stands on the ruins of two earlier churches, the first a parish church consecrated in 1147. The most important religious building in Vienna, St. Stephen's Cathedral has borne witness to many important events in Habsburg and Austrian history and has, with its multi-coloured tile roof, become one of the city's most recognizable symbols. It has 256 stairs from the top to the bottom