Father John Hardon, S.J.

The Catechist Who Fed a Starving Church

John Anthony Hardon was born on June 18, 1914, in Midland, Pennsylvania, a small steel town along the Ohio River. His father died in a construction accident when John was still a toddler. His mother, Anna, a woman of deep faith, raised him alone, working nights as a cleaning woman to keep the family together. From her he learned that sacrifice and prayer were not separate things.

In 1936 he entered the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in 1947 and pronounced his final vows in 1953. Over the following decades he taught theology at universities across the country, becoming one of the most prolific Catholic writers in American history. He authored more than thirty books and hundreds of articles, all in defense of the faith at a time when confusion and dissent were spreading through Catholic institutions.

In 1975, Pope Paul VI personally asked Father Hardon to write a comprehensive catechism for the modern world. The result, The Catholic Catechism, sold over one million copies and became a standard reference for a generation of faithful Catholics. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II consulted him during the preparation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Father Hardon founded the Marian Catechist Apostolate in 1985 to train lay men and women in authentic Catholic teaching. He was a regular guest on EWTN and a spiritual director to Mother Teresa, who asked him to help draft the constitution of the Missionaries of Charity. His devotion to the Eucharist was the center of everything he did.

He died on December 30, 2000, in Detroit, Michigan. In 2005, Cardinal Raymond Burke initiated his cause for canonization. He was declared Servant of God, the first step on the path to sainthood for a man whose life was spent feeding a Church starving for solid doctrine.

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