By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
On a warm summer afternoon in August 1950, after a long train ride from his hometown in St. Louis to Ogden’s historic Union Station, a young man walked five blocks to St. Joseph’s Catholic church, a stone edifice on a hill above the Northern Utah railroad town.
He rang the bell at the nearby church rectory. Another young man opened the door. The chance encounter that followed started an unexpected but enduring companionship between John Patrick Boyle and Rudolph August Daz.
John Patrick was born in April 1928 to Irish immigrant parents in Missouri. While in the sixth grade, he decided to become a Catholic priest. For high school, he enrolled in a local seminary.
During an academic break from his studies in 1949, John Patrick drove west with some fellow students. The group stopped in Utah.
They toured Salt Lake City and swam in the Great Salt Lake. They also drove 50 miles north, to the brand new Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, a Trappist monastery in Huntsville.
John Patrick fell in love with the beautiful mountain valley setting and the simple Quonset hut monastery. He wrote to the founding abbot, Father Maurice Lans, and asked to join. The abbot wrote back with an invitation.
In the summer of 1950, John Patrick packed his bags. Before leaving his hometown, he went to the local Sportsman’s Park to see his beloved St. Louis Cardinals play baseball one more time.
After watching Stan Musial hit a home run, John Patrick bought a railroad ticket and climbed on board a westbound train. A few days later, he was on the front porch of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
Rudolph took a different path to the same porch. He also was born in April 1928 but in Ogden, a proud descendant of Italian immigrant grandparents. During grade school, he too imagined becoming a priest, but did not seriously pursue the vocation until several years later.
He studied at two other Catholic colleges in California before enrolling at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park. While there, tragedy struck the Daz family when Rudolph’s father died of heart failure in 1948 at age 43.
The young seminarian came home whenever he could, to check on his mother and to do odd jobs to help make ends meet. A friend said that his mother—who owned a local restaurant—taught Rudolph how to cook and instilled within him “a tremendous love for the sick, the elderly and the homebound.”
In the summer of 1950, Rudolph was working at St. Joseph’s parish when John Patrick knocked on the door. John Patrick asked if someone could help him get to the new Ogden Valley monastery. Rudolph grabbed some car keys and drove the aspiring monk there himself.
John Patrick joined the abbey, made his final monastic vows in 1956, and was ordained a priest in 1967. When Rudolph was ordained a priest in 1954 at his hometown Ogden church, Huntsville’s Abbot Lans joined the service and Utah’s Trappist monks chanted part of the liturgy.
For the next half century, both men served their communities with devotion, kindness, grace, and love.
John Patrick, now known as Father Patrick, threw himself into the Trappist life of ora et labora, prayer and work. He cleaned barns, fed animals, and harvested crops. He spent thousands of hours praying for the hundreds of people he met and blessed in the abbey bookstore, as well as for all the rest of us too.
Rudolph, soon known as Monsignor Daz, became the quintessential parish priest. Serving at nine different churches—including one named after St. Patrick—he performed hundreds of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. One parishioner said, “He was always there, celebrating our successes and our victories and comforting us during our sad times.”
Both men did their work with remarkable humility.
Father Patrick told anyone who would listen, “What’s the difference between a monkey and a monk? A monkey has a tail!” He’d also tell bookstore visitors, “The rest of the monks voted to have me out here to keep me from getting in to trouble.”
On Monsignor Daz’s 50th anniversary as a priest, he told a news reporter, “I have only one gift, and that’s stability. I can stay at my post.” He added, “It is the people of the parish who make even a guy like me look good.”
I don’t know if these unexpected vocational companions—from different worlds with distinct but similar ministries—ever cultivated a close friendship. Yet, their paths continued to cross.
Monsignor Daz’s parishioners visited the Huntsville monastery frequently, returning from these pilgrimages with blessings from Father Patrick and gifts of monk bread and honey. Monsignor Daz and other priests met for an annual retreat at the monastery that Father Patrick called home.
In 2011, the Catholic Church finally relieved Monsignor Daz of his many duties. He moved to the St. Joseph’s Villa retirement home at age 82. Father Patrick joined him there in 2017 after Holy Trinity Abbey closed.
The two men celebrated Mass together every day in the Villa chapel for several years, until health problems (and a pandemic) came along during their tenth decade of life. Monsignor Daz moved to an assisted living room on the Villa’s medical floor.
Father Patrick joined him on the same medical care floor in the summer of 2022. With a trip to Heaven always on his mind, the sweet old monk told everyone within earshot, “My bags are packed!”
John Patrick finally bought a ticket for that eternal journey on August 13, 2022. His itinerary, of course, included a stop at his old abbey’s quaint little cemetery in the Ogden Valley.
A few days before all that happened, I stood at his bedside, held his hand, kissed his head, and thanked him for being my friend for half a century. Although sad, as I left his room I had to smile when I saw Rudolph standing peacefully just a few feet away. It was the last time the two men were together.
Due to health, Rudolph could not attend when Bishop Oscar Solis and a dozen priests celebrated the Catholic Mass of the Resurrection to honor the long fruitful life of the beloved Trappist monk. Afterwards, they walked his casket to the white hearse and sang farewell to him in Latin.
And then, just like Rudolph did seventy-two years ago this month, John Patrick’s brother priests helped him catch one last ride to the Huntsville monastery.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021 and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
Note: The Salt Lake Tribune published a version of this story on Sunday, August 28, 2022.
I will surely miss him. He was always there from the time I was a kid till he left the Abbey. Heaven definitely gained an angel.