The head of the Protestant Church in Germany, once described as a mixture of Mother Theresa and Demi Moore, admitted drink driving yesterday in a case that has provoked widespread criticism.
Margot Kaessmann, 51, was "completely unfit to drive," said a spokesman for prosecutors in the northern German city of Hanover, adding that tests had shown a blood alcohol level of 1.54 parts per thousand.
Police arrested the bishop on Saturday night in central Hanover after she failed to stop at a red light. She was then given a breathalyser test.
Friedrich Weber, the bishop of Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, told a German newspaper that the situation was a "difficult" one for the Protestant Church.
"People in such a position cannot allow themselves to do such things. I think she feels very abandoned", the theologian Friedrich Schorlemmer told the regional radio station MDR.
Should she be convicted, it would be difficult for her to retain her title of bishop, he said.
According to today's edition of the daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the council of the German Protestant Church was planning to discuss the incident last night in a telephone conference.
The newspaper judged it "uncertain" whether the bishop, who was the first woman to be elected head of the Protestant church, would keep her position.
The legal limit for driving in Germany is 0.5 parts per thousand but this drops to 0.3 parts per thousand if a driving offence is committed.
Rev. Kaessmann faces a fine of one month's salary and a driving ban of one year.
"I am shocked at myself that I could have made such a grave error. I know how dangerous and irresponsible drink driving is. I will of course assume the legal consequences," she was quoted as saying in mass circulation daily Bild. The woman the German press have called a "mixture of Mother Theresa and Demi Moore", is no stranger to controversy.
She made headlines around the world in 2007 when she became the first bishop in Germany to file for divorce from her husband, also a leading member of the Lutheran Church.