John Aloysius Ward OFM Cap (24 January 1929 – 27 March 2007) was a British Roman Catholic prelate.
[1] He served as Bishop of Menevia from 1 October 1980 until his appointment by Pope John Paul II as Metropolitan Archbishop of Cardiff on 25 March 1983.
He subsequently joined the novitiate of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin whom he had known from their house at Pantasaph, North Wales.
[3] He also made a prominent response to the famine in Ethiopia which led to an appeal that raised a substantial sum of over £100,000; it culminated in a large attendance at Mass in Cardiff Arms Park on 6 June 1985.
[4] Archbishop Ward also called together a Diocesan Pastoral Congress, laying down the foundations for the renewal of structures within the Archdiocese of Cardiff.
He was a very strong and active supporter of ecumenism, and became the first Catholic Bishop to address the General Synod of the Church in England.
His Funeral Mass, celebrated by Archbishop Peter Smith, took place on Monday 2 April 2007, at St. David's Metropolitan Cathedral, Cardiff.
[9] The day after giving an interview to the BBC programme Panorama about Jordan, he was taken to the hospital suffering from a blood clot.