By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
The recent death of Russell M. Nelson—the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—brings to mind again his historic 2019 meeting with Pope Francis.
When President Nelson saw Pope Francis at the Vatican, it was the first time that a president of his church met face-to-face with a pope. I think the long history of friendships between Utah Catholics and Latter-day Saints helped make that meeting possible.
Brigham Young and the Latter-day Saints first migrated to Utah in July 1847. A few decades later, as Irish priests and Holy Cross Sisters also arrived in Salt Lake City to meet the spiritual and temporal needs of miners and laborers, Young was cordial and the Catholic clergy respectful.
Yet, there also was an underlying tension between the two faiths, which both claim a divine establishment. That rivalry probably peaked in the middle of the twentieth century, when Trappist monks came to Utah too, a century after the saints.
Utah Catholic Bishop Duane Hunt invited the monks and helped their leader (Abbot Frederic Dunne from Kentucky’s Gethsemani Abbey) surreptitiously buy land for a new monastery in rural Huntsville in the lovely Ogden Valley. Prominent Latter-day Saint leader David O. McKay called that valley home too.
The Catholics and the Latter-day Saints were not always kind to each other during these times.
Latter-day Saint general authority and future apostle Bruce R. McConkie published a popular book—not authorized by McKay—called Mormon Doctrine. McConkie wrote that Catholics belonged to the church of the devil and the great abomination.
Famous Kentucky Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton was friends with Abbot Dunne, who led the monks to Utah. Merton’s journal entries reveal a rather strong Catholic hostility towards the Latter-day Saints too.
Dunne told Merton the state’s dominant religion hated Catholics and had “strange, crazy ideas.” Dunne also vented about Utah and the Salt Lake Temple, saying, “The whole place seems possessed by the devil.”
Dunne told Merton he hoped to replace the Temple’s pinnacle, a golden statue of the angel Moroni, with one of St. Michael. Dunne even said, “I only passed the Mormon temple once and I could not go inside it. I made the sign of the cross, hoping the place would fall down, but unfortunately it did not.”
Although he did not share his fellow apostle McConkie’s harsh views, McKay sometimes expressed negative sentiments about the Catholic Church. He once pointed to a Catholic edifice and called it the home of the anti-Christ.
When monks arrived in his Huntsville backyard, McKay told friends the Catholics were determined to convert as many Mormons as possible. Catholic pamphlets soliciting funds for the Utah monks suggested the Trappists would make “Catholic saints out of their neighbors.”
As a result, Merton called the Utah abbey “one of the most difficult foundations in the history of the Cistercians.” And indeed, when the pioneer Trappists arrived by train, they heard a fire engine “racing down the main street, bell ringing and siren screaming” and wondered if the local authorities were coming to get them.
Despite this rough start, the Catholics and Latter-day Saints also shared a love for common scriptures.
They each read the Old Testament Book of Sirach: “A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he that has found one has found a treasure.” They also knew well the admonition about “the great and first commandment” from the Gospel of Matthew, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Those principles compelled McKay, Hunt, the monks, and the saints to chart a different and better course.
McKay and Hunt established a friendship. McKay attended Hunt’s funeral mass at Salt Lake City’s Cathedral of the Madeleine. When McKay died, the Cathedral tolled its bells as his funeral cortege drove by.
The Huntsville monks and the saints became good friends too.
Although local residents signed petitions demanding the monks leave in 1947, they mourned when the Trappists closed their abbey in 2017. The townsfolk even made the monks grand marshals of the annual July 4th parade that year.
I think this all was a foundation of sorts for the warm and friendly meeting between President Nelson and Pope Francis in 2019. The two men talked shortly before President Nelson dedicated the first temple in Rome.
News reports say they discussed common topics, such as their mutual concern for human suffering and the importance of religious liberty, family, and faith. Afterward, President Nelson described Pope Francis as a “wonderful, gracious, and warm” man.
When Pope Francis died in April 2025, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recalled the 2019 meeting and hailed Francis as a “courageous and compassionate leader” whose example of forgiveness and service had blessed countless lives.
When President Nelson died this week, Utah Catholic leaders expressed gratitude for his lifetime of dedication, faith, and service, and thanked their Latter-day Saint neighbors for generously sharing his teaching with the world.
I expect that just as has happened for nearly every church president since McKay, when President Nelson’s funeral procession slowly passes Salt Lake City’s Catholic Cathedral, the church’s 125-year-old bells will ring out to honor him too.
(Photo of President Nelson’s 2019 visit to Pope Francis from the Vatican.)
*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.
