John J. Myers

John Joseph Myers (July 26, 1941 – September 24, 2020) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church.

John Myers was born on July 26, 1941, in Ottawa, Illinois, the eldest of seven children.

The Myers family farmed land near Earlville, Illinois.

Myers became an altar server in his parish, St. Theresa, from an early age.

He attended the Earlville schools and graduated from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa in 1963.

While he was a student at Loras, Myers studied for the priesthood in Rome under Bishop John Franz.

Myers was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Francis Reh at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for the Diocese of Peoria on December 17, 1966.

He studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University while attending seminary at the North American College. He received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology, and a Doctor of Canon Law degree.

After his ordination, Myers served as assistant pastor at Holy Family Parish in Peoria for one year.

Myers was also a member of the presbyteral council (1968–1970 and 1984–1990) and the board of consultors (1978–1990).

He then went to Washington, D.C., to serve in the Department of International Affairs of the United States Catholic Conference from 1970 to 1971.

Returning to Illinois, Myers was appointed as associate pastor of St. Matthew Parish in Champaign, Illinois, from 1971 until 1974.

Myers' positions with the diocese included:

On July 7, 1987, Pope John Paul II appointed Myers as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Peoria to assist Bishop Edward O'Rourke.

Myers was consecrated on September 3, 1987, with O'Rourke as the principal consecrator.

Archbishops Thomas Kelly and Donald Wuerl served as the co-consecrators.

He served as bishop of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois between 1990 and 2001, ecclesiastical superior of Turks and Caicos from 2001 to 2016 and as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark in New Jersey during the same period.

When the Holy See accepted O'Rourke's resignation as bishop on January 23, 1990, Myers automatically became bishop of Peoria.

While bishop, Myers issued an order forbidding Catholic hospitals in the diocese from providing emergency contraception to rape victims, a restriction he later eased.

He also fired a teacher at a Catholic high school for inviting a speaker to discuss the ordination of women to the priesthood.

During Myers' tenure the diocese saw a rapid increase in vocations to the priesthood, with many seminarians being drawn to his more conservative theology.

The plaintiff, Andrew Ward, had accused Thomas Maloney, a diocese priest, of molesting him during the 1990's when he was eight years old.

The lawsuit claimed that Myers, then bishop in Peoria, allowed Maloney to remain in ministry despite evidence of prior sexual abuse.

Maloney was later accused of sexual abuse by three more victims.

On July 24, 2001, Pope Paul II appointed Myers as the fifth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark and third superior of the Mission Sui Iuris of Turks and Caicos.

He was installed on October 9, 2001, and the pallium was conferred on June 29, 2002.

Though the customary form of spoken address for an archbishop is "Your Excellency", Myers preferred to be addressed as "Your Grace", which is customary in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

In 2001, Myers banned eulogies at funeral masses, saying that some of them were inappropriate and too long.

After pushback from parishioners, he reversed himself.

In 2001, Michael Fugee, an archdiocese priest at St. Elizabeth's Parish in Wyckoff, New Jersey, was accused of molesting a 14 year-old boy on multiple occasions in the 1990's. Fugee confessed to police in 2001 to fondling a teenage boy, but later recanted it, saying he had been pressured by investigators.

In 2002, the Dallas Morning News listed Myers among bishops and diocese administrators who had allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to continue working.

He was charged, tried and convicted in 2003 of criminal sexual contact.

On April 1, 2004, Myers criticized a group of law students at Seton Hall University for honoring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor because she allegedly favored abortion rights for women.

In 2005 and 2007, the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Newark paid financial settlements to two priests who had accused Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of abuse.

According to Cardinal Wuerl, no one from the Archdiocese of Newark informed him of these settlements, even though the retired McCarrick began living on the grounds of a seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington.

However, Fugee's conviction was overturned in 2006 by an appellate court.

To avoid a retrial, Fugee signed an agreement with the Bergen County, New Jersey, Prosecutor's Office in 2007.

He agreed to a lifetime ban working in contact with children.

The archdiocese co-signed the agreement, promising it would supervise Fugee.

In August 2013, the Diocese of Peoria settled a sexual abuse lawsuit for $1.35 million.