John Francis Dearden (October 15, 1907 – August 1, 1988) was an American Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Detroit from 1958 to 1980, and was created a cardinal in 1969.

[4] He received his episcopal consecration on the following May 18 from Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, with Bishops Edward Francis Hoban and Floyd Lawrence Begin serving as co-consecrators, at St. Agnes Church in Cleveland.

[4] He was active in community causes such as supporting equal employment opportunities and encouraging his diocese to work for better racial relations in Detroit.

[7] His commitment to racial justice frequently put him at odds with priests and lay Catholics at the parish level who organized to fight neighborhood integration.

[1] He played an influential role at the Council, helping develop key documents like Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes.

"[3][5] He dedicated himself to implementing the reforms of the Council, promoting the greater participation of the laity in diocesan affairs, encouraging the formation of a priests' senate, and ordaining married deacons.

[7][10][11] When Pope Paul VI agreed with the idea raised by participants in Vatican II and restored the permanent diaconate in 1967, Dearden was the first in America to utilize the pronouncement and augmented the declining numbers of regular clergy in his diocese by ordaining thirteen married laymen as deacons in 1971.

[7] In 1965, Dearden partnered with Cardinal Joseph Ritter to inaugurate Project Equality, an interfaith program requiring businesses to pledge to a policy of non-discrimination in hiring and discharging employees.

Dearden worked with a group that had come to fame by redesigning the management of the auto industry – the Booz Allen Hamilton management-consultant firm.

[14] During his tenure, the conference approved several liturgical reforms, including using English for the eucharistic prayer, authorizing extraordinary ministers of Communion, and holding Saturday evening Masses.

After Vatican II, Dearden had been working for a National Pastoral Council to bring bishops, priests, religious, and lay people together to examine their "shared responsibility" on civic issues in the life of the Church.

[19] He had made several exploratory steps towards this as president of the NCCB/USCCB but this had all been frustrated by a 1973 letter to the bishops from the Vatican expressing concern over events in the Church within America and the Netherlands that ordered plans for national councils to be placed on hold.

Just a few years before the anniversary of American independence, Dearden had been made the head of a committee for the NCCB to prepare a Catholic response to the 1976 Bicentennial of the United States.

The response from the hearings and the meetings were reviewed by eight preparatory committees which produced working papers and recommendations to be presented at the Call to Action conference held in the Detroit convention center with 1,340 delegates in attendance, 152 of which were appointed by bishops of the 167 American dioceses.

Many of the suggestions were viewed as radical: "Among them were recommendations for returning laicized priests to the ministry, the ordination of married men and of women, lay preachers, freedom to practice contraception, an open attitude toward homosexuality, and reception of communion by divorced and remarried Catholics.

In 1971 he was the lead for the American delegation to the third Synod of Bishops (which had been established after Vatican II to give continuing counsel to the papacy).