By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Catholics arrived here 250 years ago in 1776. Back then, there was no Utah, no United States of America, and the land beneath my Salt Lake home was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Spoiler alert—things evolved a bit during the quarter millennium that followed. I was around for about 25% of that time, but almost always looking forward and not back.
So perhaps now is a good time to consider William Shakespeare’s admonition from The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.” And maybe I should heed writer Michael Crichton’s warning that ignoring history could make me “a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
All that begs the question—what does it mean to be a leaf on a 250 year Utah Catholic tree?
I asked my friend (and Utah Historian) Gary Topping for help forming an answer. For many years, Gary worked as the archivist for the local Catholic Church.
Together, we compiled a list of the ten most important Utah Catholic developments during the last 250 years:
1. An expedition led by Franciscan priests Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante reached Central Utah and the Spanish Fork area in about September 1776. If they’d stayed, Utah would have some very different names. Catholics did return to Utah about a century later.
2. Brigham Young set a precedent with his benevolent attitude towards Catholics. He resolved an 1866 land dispute in favor of a Catholic priest trying to build a church and warmly welcomed the Holy Cross Sisters in 1875. Catholic leaders did not endorse but also did not attack Latter-day Saint practices.
3. In 1873, Catholic priest (and first bishop) Lawrence Scanlan led a wave of Irish priests to minister in Utah, mainly but not only to Irish miners.
4. The Holy Cross Sisters arrived in 1875 and started Catholic hospitals and schools throughout the state.
5. Beginning in 1900, Utah Catholics constructed (and have since restored) the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
6. Other enduring Catholic institutions developed, including a strong network of local parishes, Catholic Community Services, the Knights of Columbus, The Intermountain Catholic newspaper, and Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
7. Utah produced larger than life wealthy Catholic public and business figures/donors, including names like Kearns, Judge, McCarthey, Gallivan, McDonough, Seiner, and Skaggs.
8. In July 1947 Trappists established the Huntsville monastery in Northern Utah, but later there was a decline/departure of the monks and numerous other important religious orders (Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, etc.).
9. The Catholic child abuse scandal erupted in the 2000s.
10. Due to a shortage of priests and nuns, today married deacons, women, and lay persons play a more important role than ever in the Utah Catholic church.
It’s a pretty good list, but ultimately, all history is personal. Those past 250 years of Utah Catholic history formed me too.
Perhaps taking a cue from Brigham Young’s benevolent attitude towards Catholics, my own Latter-day Saint friends always have shown me grace and friendship. It has been a great blessing.
It is odd to be a pale Irishman living in a hot arid desert, but it was here that I first connected with people born on the auld sod of my lush green ancestral home. They were the Irish priests and nuns that Bishop Lawrence Scanlan brought here to serve the Catholic population.
Some of those good folks taught me in school, including the Holy Cross Sisters, who now have served Utahns for over 150 years. The Sisters’ Fighting Irish spirit infected me too, inspiring one of the best decisions of my life—attending college at the University of Notre Dame.
The same sisters helped bring all three of my children into the world at the old Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. Before those baby carriages, however, there was my marriage at the historic Cathedral of the Madeleine.
I like to think Bishop Scanlan completed that marvelous edifice in 1909 anticipating our wedding there eight decades later, but that’s probably not completely true. He also almost certainly did it so all three of our children could celebrate their Judge Memorial High School graduation there too.
The St. Thomas More parish church I have attended for half of my life enriches my spirit, but it also comforted me after the tragic death of my brother. Our children learned compassion and charity at Catholic places like St. Vincent de Paul School, where they did service projects at places like St. Vincent’s soup kitchen.
None of these places would be here for us without benefactors like the names I mentioned before—Kearns, Judge, McCarthey, Gallivan, McDonough, Seiner, and Skaggs. The same is true in my Ogden hometown, where I only afforded Catholic school thanks to the generosity of locals like the Evans family.
Of course, few people helped me more than the kind monks at the Trappist monastery in Huntsville, as explained in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings. The old abbey will forever be the still point in my turning world.
But not everything in Catholic Utah was wonderful.
The sex scandal of the early 2000s forced many of us to navigate a nadir of Catholic Church history—the abuse of children and related cover-up. Although still a Catholic today, I am emerging from that darkness a very different and more skeptical one.
My many positive Utah Catholic experiences help me with that process, as does the emergence of new leaders in the church, including married deacons, women, and the lay people formerly relegated to the pews. I hope their unique perspectives will prevent future abuse or cover ups.
During my Catholic school years in Utah, I learned about more than just Augustine or Aquinas. I also read about Brigham Young’s arrival here and what he said at that moment when his covered wagon emerged from Emigration Canyon.
It was a landmark moment of Utah history, but not the only one.
Another such moment is memorialized in a century-old mural in the Utah State Capitol rotunda showing Franciscan Fathers Domínguez and Escalante—soon after they emerged from Spanish Fork Canyon—looking over the shores of Utah Lake in 1776.
I first saw it many years ago during a school field trip. I learned another important lesson that day.
Utah Catholics also get to say, “This is the right place.”
(The Salt Lake Tribune published a version of this article on August 31, 2026.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for a future fun Christmas read.
