Johannes Joachim Degenhardt (31 January 1926 – 25 July 2002) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Paderborn (Germany) from 1974 until his death in 2002.

He belonged to the Catholic youth group, Bund Neudeutschland;[2] as a member of this youth organisation, which was banned by the Nazis, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, when he co-organised a demonstration of young people to show loyalty to the new spiritual leader, Lorenz Jaeger, on the day of his consecration as the Bishop of Paderborn.

Degenhardt had already been suspected by the Gestapo for some time, since he had risked his life by secretly circulating the sermons of the Münster Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen.

On 28 January 1964 he received his doctorate degree in theology from Professor Rudolf Schnackenburg; the topic of his dissertation was "Luke - Evangelist of the Poor".

In 1965, Degenhardt became university chaplain at the Pädagogische Hochschule Westfalen/Lippe in Paderborn and then in February of the same year, he became diocese representative of the Katholisches Bibelwerk.

On 8 October 1991 Archbishop Degenhardt withdrew ecclesiastical teaching authorization from the priest and university teacher, Eugen Drewermann, after he refused to retract certain statements which were not in agreement with Catholic teachings;[3] among other things, Drewermann had questioned the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Pope John Paul II himself explained his naming only one year later on the occasion of Degenhardt's death in a letter of condolence written from the World Youth Day in Toronto as follows: "With his appointment to cardinal, I wanted to make visible the faithful evidence of the Paderborn spiritual leader for the entire world church."

Degenhardt held various ecclesiastical offices, including the leadership of the Eccumenical Commission of the German Bishops Conference from 1974 to 1976.

Degenhardt died suddenly in the early morning of 25 July 2002 in the archiepiscopal palace in Paderborn at the age of 76.