Walter van Nieuwenhuisen

Before serving as Archbishop of Utrecht, van Nieuwenhuisen served as a parish priest in Dordrecht.

Following the death of Petrus Johannes Meindaerts, Archbishop of Utrecht, on October 31, 1767, the Chapter of Utrecht unanimously elected van Nieuwenhuisen as bishop elect. On February 7, 1768, he was consecrated by Bishop Johannes van Stiphout of Haarlem and Bishop Bartholomaeus Johannes Byeveld of Deventer. Despite van Nieuwenhuisen’s excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church for this act, C.B. Moss says, “The new archbishop received letters of communion from [Roman Catholic] bishops in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and from a large number of [Roman Catholic] priests, who recognized fully, not only that the Church of Utrecht was orthodox in doctrine, but also that her claims to canonical jurisdiction were sound.”[1]

Van Nieuwenhuisen died on Good Friday, April 14, 1797.

Moss, C.B. (1948). The Old Catholic Movement: Its Origins and History. Berkeley, CA: The Apocryphal Press. ISBN 9780976402596.