Johannes de Jong - Bishop and Archbishop

Bishop and Archbishop

On August 3, 1935, de Jong was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Utrecht and Titular Archbishop of Rhusium. He received his episcopal consecration on the following September 12 from Bishop Pieter Hopmans, with Bishops Arnold Diepen and Johannes Smit serving as co-consecrators, in St. Catherine's Cathedral. De Jong succeeded Johannes Henricus Gerardus Jansen as Archbishop of Utrecht and thus Primate of the Netherlands. He was also the first archbishop in the Netherlands with a university degree since the restoration of the Dutch Catholic hierarchy in the middle of the 19th century.

When the Germans invaded Holland the Archbishop did not roll out the "red carpet" as Cardinal Theodor Innitzer had previously done in Vienna, an act that had infuriated Pope Pius XI. He said he didn't want to be another Innitzer and ordered his priests to refuse the sacraments to Nazi Dutchmen. During the Second World War, he was one of the major leaders against the Nazi occupation of Netherlands. On July 26, 1942 Dutch bishops, including Archbishop Johannes de Jong, issued a decree that openly condemned Nazi deportations of Dutch workers and Jews. The Nazi response was total. Over 40,000 innocent Catholics of Jewish descent were rounded up and never heard from again.36 After this event, Sister Lehnert said the Pope was convinced that while the Bishop’s protest cost forty thousand lives, a protest by him would mean at least two hundred thousand innocent lives that he was not ready to sacrifice.37 While politicians,generals, and dictators might gamble with the lives of people, a Pope could not.