Peter Schipka was born on 29 December 1970 in Vienna, where he also spent his childhood, school and university years.
After leaving school, Schipka studied law at the University of Vienna from 1989 to 1994, worked as an assistant at the Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Vienna from 1992 to 1995 and obtained his doctorate in law in 1997.
In 2002, he completed his studies in Catholic theology at the University of Vienna, which he had begun in 1995 and which had taken him to Oxford (UK) in the 1997/98 academic year. From 2000 to 2002, Schipka also worked as an assistant at the Institute for Social Ethics at the University of Vienna.
He was ordained a deacon in 2001 and was ordained a priest in St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna the following year. Schipka then spent his subsequent chaplaincy in Mödling (St Othmar parish). During this time, he also taught religion at a secondary school.
In 2004, he studied for a doctorate in moral theology at the University of Regensburg. From 2007 to 2010, he also worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Moral Theology. Schipka returned to Vienna in 2010, where he was the priest in charge of the parish of Rodaun in Vienna's 23rd district until the summer of 2016. In 2014, he completed his doctorate in moral theology at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz.
The Austrian Bishops' Conference elected Peter Schipka as its Secretary General on 18 November 2010. On 1 March 2011, he took up this office. Peter Schipka has been Rector of the Imperial Court Chapel in Vienna since February 2020.