By Gary Topping–
One of the spiritual beacons for Catholics working in downtown Salt Lake City from 1974-96 was St. Paul’s Chapel, with its associated Paraclete Gift Shop located at 226 South Main Street. Another gift to the diocese from the Kearns family, it was the brainchild of Colleen Kearns Steiner. Staffed by the Paulist Fathers from its inception to the death of Fr. Frederick Draeger (in photo with Bishop Joseph Federal) in 1981, and then by the Blessed Sacrament Fathers until its closing, the facility offered daily Mass, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and classes on Catholicism in addition to publications and religious articles in the gift shop.
I discovered the place during the 1980s while I was working at the Utah State Historical Society in the old Rio Grande Depot on 3rd South and would often walk up for daily Mass. In addition to the spiritual refreshment the chapel offered, it also provided an opportunity to get acquainted with other Catholic denizens of downtown like my fellow Cathedral parishioner John Kirk, who worked at Photo Blue and would join me part way for our walk back to work, and Henry Paro, an FBI agent who worked in the Federal Building. Henry and I later enrolled together for a Chinese cooking class at West High, and I still use some of the recipes we learned there.
The interior decoration of the chapel was very odd, and in fact when you walked in you might have felt like you were entering Hell instead of a Catholic chapel. The décor was entirely red, including both the carpets and the chairs. The Stations of the Cross were prints of El Greco paintings, whose ethereal, undulating figures looked less like saints than like tormented souls trying to escape the flames of Hell. But any infernal impressions one might have had were immediately dispelled when one glimpsed the altar, which always had a monstrance with the exposed Sacrament (these were the days of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers). When the priest came in and proceeded to the altar, we knelt while he blessed us with the Host before beginning Mass. I never failed to be impressed by the contrast between the holiness we were experiencing and the secular pursuits I imagined going on simultaneously on Main Street just outside the door.
The Blessed Sacrament Fathers running the chapel in those days were Fr. Anthony Schueller, SSS and Fr. Maurice Prefontaine, SSS (Fr. J. T. Lane, SSS sometimes filled in). All were excellent homilists, and I soon came to regard the spiritual break they provided as an essential element in my work day. On Holy Days of Obligation the place would be packed, and it provided the only convenient opportunity I would have of getting to Mass at all.
A nearby fire in 1996 forced the closing of the chapel. By that time, though, I was long gone, having left the Historical Society in 1991 to accept a professorship at Salt Lake Community College. After that time, I found it more convenient to attend morning Mass at the Cathedral (or after I joined the Pastoral Center staff in 2001, in the chapel there) on my way to my first class. But those wonderful times at St. Paul Chapel are still part of what I have become as a Catholic. The Blessed Sacrament Fathers are now gone as well, and there is a big spiritual void down there on Main Street.
Gary: I have fond boyhood memories of visiting Fr. Draeger at the Catholic Center. We would visit, browse through the gift shop, attend mass, and then he would take us to lunch at Lamb’s Grill on Main Street a half block away. Then, for 30 years as an adult, I worked right across the street from Lamb’s, and always thought of Fr. Draeger and the center. Thanks for sharing this memory!