Petrus Johannes Meindaerts

Petrus Johannes Meindaerts
Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht
Church	Old Catholic Church
Archdiocese	Utrecht
In office	1739-1767
Predecessor	Theodorus van der Croon
Successor	Walter van Nieuwenhuisen
Orders
Consecration	October 18, 1739 by Dominique Marie Varlet

Petrus Johannes Meindaerts (died 1767) served as the tenth Archbishop of Utrecht from 1739 to 1767. After the death of his consecrator, Bishop Dominique Marie Varlet, Meindaerts consecrated other bishops, such that all later Old Catholic bishops derive their apostolic succession from him.

Meindaerts was ordained to the priesthood in Ireland by Roman Catholic Bishop Jacob Fagan of Meath, Ireland. According to C.B. Moss, Meindaerts arrived in Ireland in the late summer of 1716 and was arrested on suspicious of being a Jacobite spy, avoiding imprisonment by convincing an officer familiar with Louvain that he was a student at the university there.

Meindaerts subsequently served as Archpriest of Leeuwarden and a Dean of Friesland.

Following the death of Theodorus van der Croon, Archbishop of Utrecht, on June 9, 1739, the Chapter of Utrecht elected Meindaerts as bishop elect. On October 18, 1739, he was consecrated by Bishop Dominique Marie Varlet, former Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Babylon. Meindaerts was subsequently excommunicated for this act by Benedict XIV.

At the time, 52 parish acknowledged the jurisdiction of Meindaerts: 33 in the Diocese of Utrecht, 17 in Haarlem, one in Leeuwarden, and one in Nordstrand, Germany.

After Varlet’s death on May 14, 1742, Meindaerts set himself to the task of ensuring apostolic succession within the Old Catholic Church. On September 2, 1742, he consecrated Hieronymus de Bock as Bishop of Haarlem, a see left vacant by the Roman Catholic Church since 1587. Upon Bock’s death, he consecrated John van Stiphout as Bishop of Haarlem on July 11, 1745.

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