John Heaps
Australian Catholic bishop (1927–2004)
John Edward Heaps (25 February 1927 – 21 June 2004) was an Australian bishop of the Catholic Church. He served for just over 10 years as auxiliary bishop of Sydney and became a controversial figure within the church following his retirement.
Early life
Heaps was born in Hamilton, New South Wales to an Anglican father and a Catholic mother. He had two brothers and a sister. His father died when he was 12 years old. He left school when he was fourteen and worked at Consolidated Press before joining the AIF when he was 18. He served for two years before joining seminary to become a priest. His younger brother Alfred was also ordained as a priest in 1960 but died in a car accident less than five years after his ordination.
Priesthood
Heaps studied at St Columba's College, Springwood and St Patrick's College, Manly. He was ordained a priest on 8 March 1958 at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney by Cardinal Norman Thomas Gilroy.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Heaps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.