Cardinal Johannes Willebrands

Steady hand at the Vatican

Johannes Gerardus Maria Willebrands, priest: born Bovenkarspel, The Netherlands 4 September 1909; ordained priest 1934; Secretary, Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity 1960-69; President, Secretariat (later Pontifical Council) for Promoting Christian Unity 1969-89; Titular Bishop of Mauriana 1964-75; named a Cardinal 1969; Archbishop of Utrecht 1975-83; died Denekamp, The Netherlands 1 August 2006.

As the first 1978 conclave was moving clearly towards electing Albino Luciani as pope, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands was sitting next to a clearly unnerved Luciani. "Courage," he told the future John Paul I, gripping his arm. "If the Lord gives the burden, he also gives the strength to carry it."

Although reserved, even a bit shy, Willebrands was the archetypal steady hand at the Vatican, head of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and a respected figure in international Christian relations.

But it was Luciani's predecessor as pope, Paul VI, who had in 1975 handed the faithful Willebrands the more challenging task - in parallel with his Vatican job - of leading the Dutch Church as Archbishop of Utrecht. Reticent as a public leader, Willebrands could do little to unite a bitterly divided hierarchy and Church and inspire the faithful who were giving up the practice of their faith in droves. A relieved Willebrands retired from Utrecht in 1983, returning full-time to the Vatican job in which he excelled and which had suffered because of his attention to his diocese. He would retire six years later, soon after his 80th birthday.

Willebrands was born near Haarlem into a devout Catholic family, the eldest son of nine children of a market auctioneer and his wife. Jan Willebrands decided early on to be a priest, studying at the seminary at Warmond, where he was ordained in 1934. Recognised as showing promise, he was sent for further studies to the Angelicum in Rome, where he did a doctorate on Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Returning to the Netherlands in 1937, he worked in parishes before joining the staff of his old seminary in 1940. It was there that he lived through the Second World War and German occupation. In 1945 he became rector, a post he held until being summoned to Rome in June 1960 by Cardinal Augustin Bea, head of the Vatican's newly created Secretariat for Christian Unity. Willebrands became its secretary.

Bea, an ecumenical pioneer, had been watching Willebrands' enthusiasm for overcoming divisions within the Christian world. Willebrands had been chosen in 1946 as president of the St Willibrord Association, which worked to overcome the Catholic/Protestant divide in his homeland. With colleagues he travelled round a ruined Europe seeking out other Catholic theologians who had become ecumenical enthusiasts as a result of wartime co-operation between Churches.

The group that Willebrands founded in 1948, the Catholic Conference on Ecumenical Questions, with more than 50 members, did not seek Vatican approval but kept it informed of its work. A key contact in Rome from 1951 was Bea, then Rector of the Jesuit Biblical Institute, who insisted he come to see him each time he was in Rome.

The group was in informal contact with the newly founded World Council of Churches, which brought together many Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It was Willebrands' contacts in and via the WCC - together with his strong personal commitment - that led Bea to bring him to the Vatican to deepen Catholic commitment to the cause.

These were exciting times for a rising generation of intellectual Catholics, and Willebrands played an important role at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The Secretariat for Christian Unity prepared initial drafts of the Council's documents on ecumenism, religious freedom, relations with non-Christian religions and divine revelation. Without the Secretariat's behind-the-scenes work, some of these key documents might never have been adopted.

Moreover, without Willebrands' charm offensive, no Orthodox Church might have attended. Although a pan-Orthodox conference in Rhodes in 1962 had decided not to take up Vatican invitations to attend, Willebrands' personal mission to the Moscow Patriarchate two weeks before the Council opened saw the Russian Church (with Soviet backing) break ranks and steal a march on its old rival, Constantinople. Other Orthodox Churches then also sent observers.

Willebrands had to defend the presence of the Russian Orthodox from criticism by exiled Ukrainian Catholic bishops, whose Church had been "abolished" in Ukraine in an unholy alliance of the Soviet state and the Moscow Patriarchate. He was helped in February 1963 by the Soviets' dramatic decision to free the Ukrainian Catholic leader Iosyf Slipyi from labour camp and send him into exile. Willebrands accompanied Slipyi from Moscow into exile in Rome.

It was left to Willebrands on the penultimate day of the Vatican Council in December 1965 to read out the momentous declaration cancelling the mutual excommunication of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in 1054.

Willebrands was appointed a titular bishop in 1964 and succeeded Bea as president of the Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1969 in the wake of his former boss's death. Within weeks he was named a cardinal by Pope Paul (indeed, at the time of his death Willebrands would be the oldest cardinal).

Kept on in his post by Popes John Paul I and John Paul II, the multilingual Willebrands travelled tirelessly to ecumenical gatherings, inevitably becoming known as the "Flying Dutchman". In 1985 he fought successfully to prevent his beloved Secretariat being subordinated to the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a Vatican curial reorganisation, arguing that this would send the wrong signal to other Christians. Instead, Pope John Paul II made it a Pontifical Council in 1988.

Although he lacked what the Italians call "presenza" - something which ensured he never became pope - Willebrands had passion for his cause and a sense of humour which made him an effective partner in the Catholic Church's ecumenical dialogue.

Felix Corley