It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research announces the death of our founder, John Wijngaards, on 2nd January 2025.
For nearly 50 years, John – whom many knew as ‘Hans’ – was a prominent supporter of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church. In 1998, he took a very public stand for this cause, resigning from the Catholic priesthood in protest of Pope John Paul II’s banning of women priests – as well as any discussion of the issue.
Born on 30th September 1935 in Surabaya, Indonesia, to Dutch parents, Wijngaards and his family endured profound hardships during World War II. His father, who was a high school teacher, was drafted into the Dutch army to fight against the Japanese and was forced to work on the railway lines in Thailand as a prisoner of war. At the same time, Wijngaards, his mother, and three of his brothers spent four years in Japanese war encampments in Java. After the war, he and his entire family were repatriated to the Netherlands where they faced poverty and deprivation.
Wijngaards studied at the major seminaries of Roosendaal in the Netherlands and Mill Hill in the United Kingdom. He joined the Mill Hill Missionary Society in 1958 and was ordained a priest in 1959. He was then sent to Rome for further study, where he obtained the Licentiate of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and a Doctorate of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Wijngaards served as a Mill Hill Missionary in India as resident professor at St John’s College in Hyderabad for fourteen years, then for many years on lecture tours throughout India and Pakistan. After being elected Vicar General of the Mill Hill Missionaries in 1976, a post he held for six years, he helped build up missionary projects across five continents. From 1982-2009 he directed Housetop, an international centre of adult faith formation. During that time, he was also Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Missionary Institute London which was affiliated with Louvain Catholic University and Middlesex University.
Wijngaards was at heart a scholar and teacher with a deep thirst for justice. Over the past three decades, he continued to expand his engagement with church teachings that he believed needed reform. In 2005, he founded the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, an independent theological think tank that produced ground-breaking academic studies of taboo topics such as contraception, same-sex relationships, and authority in the church. He recruited some of the most distinguished scholars from around the world to develop these reports with objective, academic rigour.
Source: ICN
