By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I often check for news about one of the most wonderful of the American Trappist monasteries I have visited—New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa.
In late 2025, I read this item: “Fall seemed to declare its closure with a dramatic delivery of over twelve inches of snow on the last day of November. This coincided with the day of the burial of one of our brothers, Br. John O’Driscoll. Br. John died on the morning of November 26th at the Stonehill Care Center.”
New Melleray’s former abbot—my friend Father Brendan Freeman—once told me that Brother John was the last Ireland-born monk living at the abbey founded by Irishmen. Both Brother John and New Melleray have interesting Irish backstories.
During a French Revolution in 1830 (the one depicted in Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting in the Louvre), France expelled 60 Irish monks saying they were undesirable Englishmen. In 1832, the exiles established Mount Melleray Abbey near Waterford.
Waterford was grateful. During the Great Irish Hunger (Potato Famine) of the middle 1800s—the Mount Melleray monks fed hundreds of their neighbors every single day.
The abbot worried, however, that eventually he might not be able to feed his own monks. So, he decided to establish an American monastery where they could all retreat if needed.
In 1849, a small contingent of the Irish Trappists started New Melleray Abbey on donated farm and timber land in Iowa’s frontier near the Mississippi River. Sixteen more left Ireland the same year to join them.
Ten made it after a cholera plague killed the other six as they rode a steamer upriver from New Orleans. Those brave Irish monks now rest in unmarked graves somewhere along the Mississippi.
With this origin tale, it’s not surprising that for over 175 years the New Melleray Abbey story has been about perseverance in the face of hardship. Brother John understood that narrative all too well.
John (Sean) was born in 1940 in County Cork, one of six O’Driscoll children in a family scraping out a living in Ireland during the World War II years marked by food rationing, fuel shortages, and fears of invasion. After 5 years in the army, John entered New Melleray in 1963 and made his solemn profession in 1968.
The baggage of his difficult youth followed him into the monastery. According to his Trappist eulogist—New Melleray superior Fr. Jerome Machar—peace in the monastic life “was to prove elusive” for Brother John, someone “known for his unwavering convictions and readiness to defend them.”
Father Jerome began his eulogy noting that when he mentioned to a fellow monk that Brother John was often called an irascible Irishman, the other monk replied, “with a leprechaun twinkle” in his eye, “What other kind of Irishman is there?”
Brother John, according to Father Jerome, “knew he had a temper: He exerted great effort trying to keep it under control…until someone disagreed with him!”
Father Brendan once hinted that John’s fighting Irish nature forced him to move between abbeys when his anger had gotten the better of him. Apparently, that’s how he ended up for a few years at the Trappist monastery I knew best—Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah.
I did not know him well then, but Brother John worked closely with my Utah Trappist friend Father Alan Hohl, moving huge and heavy irrigation pipes together by hand to water the arid abbey farm. John also loved riding a bike along the scenic mountain passes in the Ogden Valley.
I first discussed all that with him a half century after he did it.
The Iowa monastery’s website proclaims that, “[T]he Irish heritage of friendliness and openness is still alive at New Melleray.” We enjoyed that love and hospitality when we were there in early October 2022.
Father Brendan had us meet with Brother John during our visit (see photo, with Brother John on the left). We talked and laughed together, sharing many memories of the Utah abbey where I grew up (a tale described in my 2021 memoir Monastery Mornings).
Brother John was cheerful, but already showing the ill effects of age, Parkinson’s Disease, and the loss of his peripheral vision. The next time I saw Father Brendan, he reported that poor health (and perhaps some conflicts with other monks) had led to John’s placement in the Stonehill Nursing Home where he died last November at age 85.
During his affectionate eulogy, Father Jerome said, “Despite his inner struggles, Brother John remained faithful to his monastic commitment. The eyes of his heart have been cloudy, and he might not have been able to see clearly what was actually happening around him, but he stayed on the path.”
Father Jerome explained that John’s low self-esteem likely made him more irascible during life’s everyday conflicts, but the monastery and even the nursing home helped:
“Saint Bernard wrote, ‘The more surely you know yourself to be loved, the easier you will find it to love in return.’ All indications are that the time Brother John spent at Stonehill Nursing Home helped heal some of his heart wounds, come to an awareness of God’s love for him, and allowed him to be comfortable with his true inner self. This is a journey few of us dare to make.”
There are not many Irish monks left.
A few years ago, Father Brendan helped three different fragile Irish monasteries join together into one new community, called Our Lady of Silence. The Trappists now have only three monasteries for men and one for women left in Ireland. Wikipedia says there are some three dozen ruins of old closed Cistercian abbeys in Ireland.
This parallels, of course, the rather steep decline in the number of Irish Catholic clerics generally. The legendary Irish priests, nuns, and monks that I knew—and knew of—seem to be a thing of the past.
Or, at the very least, they are endangered.
I worry that the great Irish abbey of New Melleray may face a similar fate. About a half dozen years ago, the Trappists established what is called a Commission of the Future to determine what happens to the Iowa abbey.
Monks from monasteries in Virginia and New York have taken turns leading the Iowa foundation. In 2025, the Commission urged the Iowa monks to “realistically consider its options for the future” given “the aging of its members and diminishing numbers.”
The Commission also asked the Iowa community to seriously ponder: “What would the fullness of monastic life look like in the future? Where is the Holy Spirit leading, individually and communally?”
It would be heartbreaking if the lovely New Melleray Abbey closes. But then again, I also know how the American scholar and public servant Daniel Patrick Moynihan defined the essence of Irish blood.
Reacting to the assassination of JFK in November 1963—the same year Brother John O’Driscoll joined the Iowa monastery—Moynihan said, “I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”
*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 Christmas 2026.
