Priest and broadcaster; Born December 2, 1939; Died May 17, 2008. JOHN Fitzsimmons, who has died aged 68, was a priest and controversial broadcaster who would have been a Roman Catholic bishop had he not been both theologically radical and incorrigibly outspoken.

When Bishop Stephen Macgill of Paisley (Fitzsimmons's home diocese) retired, the clergy were twice consulted about a successor. On both occasions Fitzsimmons was overwhelmingly their choice. But he had made enemies among the Scottish hierarchy, most significantly Cardinal Winning, and the hierarchy was not prepared to see him made a bishop.

The clue to his life and to the opposition he aroused lay in the second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII in 1962. At the time, Fitzsimmons, by far the most intellectually able candidate for the priesthood of his generation, was studying philosophy and theology at the Gregorian University. He was picked out to be a stenographer at the Vatican Council, which promised a new era of freshness and openness within the Roman Catholic Church.

Fitzsimmons's later conflicts with the hierarchy arose from his absolute conviction that Scottish bishops had abandoned the insights and betrayed the spirit of Vatican II, and of Pope John, whom he revered. When he was recording a radio programme about Pope John in the Villa Borghese in Rome, tears were streaming down his face.

John Fitzsimmons was born in Paisley, the son of a mother of Huguenot stock who had converted to Catholicism and a Roman Catholic father from Armagh. He liked to say that having been brought up to sing metrical psalms at his mother's knees made him stand out from the majority of pupils at St Mary's Primary School. From there he went to Blairs College, which at that time provided secondary education for those planning to enter the priesthood, and then to the Scots' College in Rome where the rector described Fitzsimmons as the best student he had ever encountered.

Fitzsimmons was ordained in Rome but continued his biblical studies at the Gregorian University and then at the University of St Joseph in Beirut, at the Ecole Biblique in Jordan and at the Biblical Institute in Jerusalem. He was fluent in Italian, French, Spanish and German as well as in the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, and in Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic and Syriac. He also spoke the language of Celtic Park with great conviction.

When he eventually returned to Scotland he was appointed curate of St Mary's in Greenock and taught at St Peter's College in Cardross, in a building widely acclaimed by the architectural profession but which Fitzsimmons always regarded as useless as a centre for training priests.

By the end of the 1970s, Fitzsimmons was a scholar of international reputation. He was a member of the prestigious International Commission on English in the Liturgy, joint chair of the Catholic church's joint Commission on Doctrine with the Church of Scotland, teaching both in the seminary and at St Andrews Teacher Training College and a frequent lecturer at Glasgow University. But in ecclesiastical terms still a curate, based by then at St Joseph's in Clarkston.

When Pope John Paul II visited Scotland in 1982 Fitzsimmons wrote the homily which the Pope delivered at Bellahouston Park, including the invitation the Pope issued to other Christians to walk "hand in hand" with him.

In 1986, Fitzsimmons was appointed rector of the Scots College in Rome. He was extremely critical of the academic standards, of the facilities and of what he regarded as a lack of sympathy with contemporary biblical and theological strands. He restored the library, built a swimming pool for students and staff (as it happened without planning permission but, in return for a fine and a promise from Fitzsimmons never again to build a swimming pool in Rome without permission, the pool was allowed to remain).

Some extremely conservative students, however, reported his theological and biblical radicalism to the hierarchy, to say nothing of his fairly critical remarks about bishops back home, and he was dismissed. He was eventually given the parish of St John Bosco in Erskine, which he regarded not as the Siberian exile it was meant to be but as a new challenge. He continued to be critical of Pope John Paul II and the Scottish bishops. Frequently he was instructed by his bishop, John Mone, to make no more public comments, but he always found the temptation too great to resist. Eventually he was forced to retire and moved to a clergy house in Gourock.

Fitzsimmons was a very successful broadcaster. For many years he presented The Greetings Programme on BBC Radio Scotland. He loved travel, cruises, paid for more often than not by his frequent visits to bookmakers on land or casinos aboard ship. He had enormous talent, was respected more in other churches than in his own, lived life to the full and was fiercely loved by his friends.