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 fifty 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.
Wijngaards was a prolific writer, authoring over 350 articles, 12 educational websites, and 12 pamphlets. He also wrote 35 books over the course of his lifetime, and his website womenpriests.org, founded in 1999, is the largest online archive of material in support of the ordination of women — receiving a million unique readers in one year alone. His final book, Why Christ Rejects All Prejudice Against Women (Acadian House) published just weeks ago on 18 December, is fittingly focused on the issue that so grounded his prophetic ministry.
Wijngaards was predeceased by his wife, Jackie Clackson, whom he married in a simple Church ceremony in the Netherlands in May 2000. Clackson, a former nun, had worked with Wijngaards in India and co-founded the Housetop Centre with him. ‘Living in the same house and shouldering joint responsibility for some many diverse apostolic projects had brought us very close’, Wijngaards wrote on his autobiographical website. When Rome released him from the obligation of celibacy in February 2000, ‘the result was inevitable’, Wijngaards said, ‘we decided to get married’.
Reflecting on his own life on his website, Wijngaards summed up this way: ‘I have lived a life full of rich and colourful experiences. I dedicated my energy to worthwhile causes. My aim has been to open new doors and widen horizons for people worldwide. I hope that my story will inspire others and encourage them to do the same’.
Reflecting on Wijngaards’ quest for justice and liberation in the Catholic church, Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri, Director of Research at the Wijngaards Institute, said:
“Hans believed strongly in the dignity of each and every human being. He once told us that we are endowed by God with a brain and a conscience, and we have a God-given right to make use of them. He saw the extent to which prejudices and blind adherence to traditions and authority could harm many people. He believed that overcoming this was the liberating purpose of Christianity”.
Miriam Duignan, Executive Director of the Wijngaards Institute, said:
“Ultimately Hans retained his priestly devotion to the church and his Catholic faith, because he believed in its power to transform and help people. Hans believed the key to challenge and change harmful teachings was to provide qualified, constructive, academic criticism that shows how a more inclusive understanding of Catholicism is possible and necessary and to do so using arguments which are convincing to leaders of the Catholic Church. This is the legacy he has left in the world and the mission the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Institute will continue long into the future”.
The We Are Church movement is the poorer for the loss of Anthony Padovano. We each have our memories of him which serve to show what a treasure he was for us all.