Ogden's Benedictine sisters: 67 years of caring

Friday, Jan. 09, 2015

(Editor’s note: In recognition of the Year for Consecrated Life, the Intermountain Catholic is featuring articles about the religious orders that contributed to the faith in Diocese of Salt Lake City. Read additional the articles about the Benedictines in this issue.)

The Catholic Church, in the form of two women’s religious orders, has played a vital role in the history of health care in Utah. That history occurred in two phases, both caused by a rapid influx of non-Mormon immigrants that overtaxed existing public health-care facilities. The first wave took place in the 1870s, when railroad workers and miners flooded into the territory and the Holy Cross Sisters arrived to create Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City and, briefly, St. John’s Hospital in Silver Reef. 

The second wave came in the 1940s, when the creation of military facilities in Utah to support the country’s efforts in World War II brought military and support personnel. That time it was Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedictine from St. Joseph, Minn., who for 40 years (1946-86) created and ran St. Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden. For a short time, they also oversaw St. Michael’s Hospital in Richfield.

While the Ogden Air Depot (later Hill Air Force Base) supercharged the Ogden economy and created a great many jobs (by the 1970s it was the state’s largest employer), it also brought health care needs that the public Dee Hospital simply could not meet. Accordingly, Weber County and Ogden City approached Monsignor Wilfrid J. Giroux, the pastor of St. Joseph Parish, about finding an order of Catholic sisters who would be willing to build a new hospital.  The story, often lovingly retold by the sisters, was that Msgr. Giroux opened the Catholic Directory and started going alphabetically through the listings of women’s religious orders until he came to the Benedictine convent in Minnesota, which had over 1,200 sisters, of which, he argued, they could surely spare a few for Utah. Although the Mother Superior initially refused, Giroux would not take “no” for an answer: A week later he showed up at their front door and said, “I came to get my sisters.”

The Benedictines did not think small: St. Benedict’s Hospital was a large and completely modern facility with well-trained staff and state-of-the-art equipment. It was also very expensive, and funding had to come from a variety of sources, both secular and ecclesiastical. Local physicians requested that it be constructed close enough to Dee Hospital that they could practice in both locations. That created some competition between the two institutions, but there proved to be enough business to go around, and Dee Hospital even expanded its facility.

During the 40 years the Benedictines ran the hospital and its associated nursing school, dozens of sisters served there. Many of them held advanced degrees, and they quickly earned the respect of the Ogden community.  

“They were not stereotypic religious women,” Kathryn L. MacKay, historian of the Ogden Benedictines, says, “but skilled, assertive entrepreneurs in the medical marketplace. The success of Ogden’s St. Benedict’s Hospital was founded on sisters who were highly trained and skilled in a well-equipped facility and selfless in the care of their patients.”

As the 20th century drew to a close, maintaining St. Benedict’s Hospital became more difficult: Vocations to religious orders were declining in numbers and increasingly sophisticated hospital equipment became excessively expensive, among other reasons. Accordingly, in 1986 the Benedictines joined with Holy Cross Health System in the interest of a financial efficiency that they hoped would enable them to keep the Ogden hospital open.

Alas, it was not to be. As church-sponsored hospitals all over the country found themselves increasingly stressed, Holy Cross Health System in Utah was forced, not without considerable bitterness, to sell out to a secular corporation, Health Trust, Inc.  The transaction was completed in 1994.

However, many of the Benedictine sisters remained in Ogden and even thrived for a time. Some continued in salaried or volunteer positions at the hospital, while others provided services to women, children and families through the St. Benedict’s Foundation, which was created in the 1970s.  The sisters were even able to build a new living accommodation for themselves.  Eventually, though, with dwindling vocations and increasingly aging members, the remaining sisters, put their monastery on the market, packed up and returned to Minnesota in 2013. It was the end of an impressive episode in Utah Catholic history.