The terms Old Catholic Church, Old Catholics, Old-Catholic churches or Old Catholic movement designate "any of the groups of Western Christians who believe themselves to maintain in complete loyalty the doctrine and traditions of the undivided church but who separated from the see of Rome after the First Vatican council of 1869–70".
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, the Lutheran churches, the Anglican Communion, the Mennonite churches, the Methodist churches, the Moravian Church, Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Reformed churches, as well as the Baptist World Alliance and Pentecostal churches. Notably, the Catholic Church is not a full member, although it sends delegates to meetings who have observer status.
Utrecht is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Netherlands, about 35 km south east of the capital Amsterdam and 45 km north east of Rotterdam. It has a population of 361,966 as of 1 December 2021.
The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest Lutheran denomination in Europe and the third-largest in the world, after the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.
The Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, sometimes known as the Dutch Roman Catholic Church of the Old Episcopal Order, the Church of Utrecht , or Jansenist Church of Holland, is an Old Catholic jurisdiction originating from the Archdiocese of Utrecht (695–1580). The Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands is the mother church of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht.
The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is an independent Old Catholic church based in the United States and founded by Polish-Americans.
Adrianus Johannes Simonis was a Dutch cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Utrecht from 1983 to 2007, and was made a cardinal in 1985.
The Holland Mission or Dutch Mission was the common name of a Catholic Church missionary district in the Low Countries during and after the Protestant Reformation.
The Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland is an Old Catholic denomination in Switzerland. This denomination is part of the Union of Utrecht.
The Catholic Church in the Netherlands is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Its primate is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, currently Willem Jacobus Eijk since 2008. In 2015 Catholicism was the single largest religion of the Netherlands, forming some 23% of the Dutch people, based on in-depth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s.
The Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches, most commonly referred to by the short form Union of Utrecht, is a federation of Old Catholic churches, nationally organized from schisms which rejected Roman Catholic doctrines of the First Vatican Council in 1870; its member churches are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The International Old Catholic Bishops' Conference or International Bishops' Conference (IBC) is the synod of bishops of Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches (UU) member churches.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rotterdam is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church in South Holland province of the Netherlands. The diocese is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht. Since 2011, the bishop has been Hans van den Hende.
Arnold Harris Mathew, self-styled de jure 4th Earl Landaff of Thomastown, was the founder and first bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and a noted author on ecclesiastical subjects.
The Old Catholic Church in Sweden is the Swedish member church of the Union of Utrecht.
The Lordship of Utrecht was formed in 1528 when Charles V of Habsburg conquered the Bishopric of Utrecht, during the Guelders Wars.
The Bishops' Conference of the Netherlands is a permanent body within the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands which determines policies and directs the apostolic mission within the Netherlands. It is governed by bishops from around the country.
The Old Catholic Archdiocese of Utrecht is an archdiocese within the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands which split from the Archdiocese of Utrecht officially in 1723 because of the illicit consecration of Cornelius van Steenoven to the episcopate.
Petrus Johannes Meindaerts 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.
Bernd Wallet serves as the 84th Archbishop of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands. Elected on 15 February 2020, he was consecrated on 18 September 2021, after two delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
