Year of Faith Pilgrimage: Saint Pius X Parish

Intermountain Catholic

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Saint Pius X Catholic Church in Moab was dedicated in 1955. IC photos/Marie Mischel

(Editor’s note: For the Year of Faith, which ends Nov. 24, Bishop John C. Wester has designated 12 churches in the Diocese of Salt Lake City as pilgrimage sites. This article is one in a series about the sites. More information can be found at http://www.dioslc.org/images/year-of-faith/pilgrimage/Year%20of%20Faith%20Passport%20Booklet%20Version%20English.pdf.)

MOAB — In this series about the 12 churches in the Diocese of Salt Lake City that have been designated as Year of Faith pilgrimage sites by Bishop John C. Wester, I have tried to share my experiences during each trip. Sometimes these articles describe my talks with parishioners in the different communities, sometimes they relate my own encounters with God.

In the case of Saint Pius X Parish in Moab, however, I’m going to defer to another pilgrim whose recent experience was much more moving than mine.

This other pilgrim was a man who visited St. Pius X Catholic Church one October evening after the church was closed. Fr. Wheaton happened to be in the rectory at the time and looked out the window. He saw the man and his companion and walked outside to greet them.

That encounter was described by the pilgrim in a letter he sent to Fr. Wheaton, who shared the correspondence with me.

"When I tried to open the door it was locked," the man wrote. "Needless to say, I was disappointed. As I was getting ready to leave, you appeared and introduced yourself. I told you that I wanted to light a candle for my son. You said, ‘What parish are you from?’ I told you that I am not Catholic. Your response was incredible, because it was so filled with kindness. You looked at me and said, ‘Of course you can. Just make sure the door is closed when you leave.’"

In the letter, the man said he had come to the church because his son, who was on the way to a job interview, had sent him a text asking him for prayers.

Here’s how the letter writer describes entering the church to light the candle for his son: "I was so struck by the beauty of that place, the Madonna with the blazing heart, offering mercy and compassion, the flames burning from our own candles constituting a plea but also acting as a kind of reciprocity."

Since then he has thought many times about those moments, he wrote. "If the church had been open and I simply walked in, I would have missed the beautiful moment where you gave to strangers the keys to your kingdom and allowed us to enter. Your kindness touched me profoundly. … Every day we throw stones into the pond, watch the water change from placid to ripples radiating from the impact of the stone. Usually we just turn our backs and never see what the ripples have become. I wanted to give you a glimpse."

Fr. Wheaton said the letter is meaningful to him precisely because it let him know the profound effect of his simple act of opening the church. In Moab he ministers to many tourists who have a crisis of some sort, he said: He visits with them in those brief moments, then they are gone and he never knows how they fare. He understands that, he said, but the letter gave him the ending of a story he otherwise never would have known.

As pastor, Fr. Wheaton’s flock includes not only a core group of parishioners who live in Moab and the tourists who visit the area, but also three other Catholic communities in the area. He offers Saturday vigil Masses in Moab and at Sacred Heart Mission in La Sal. On Sundays, he celebrates the 9 a.m. Mass in Moab, then travels an hour to Monticello for the noon Mass at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Monticello. He returns to Moab for lunch, then heads to Saint Michael Mission in Green River for a bilingual Mass.

In the early years, it was St. Pius X Mission that was served by a priest from St. Joseph Catholic Church; Saint Pius X wasn’t named a parish until 1957, two years after it began as a mission.

"Bishop Duane G. Hunt officiated at groundbreaking ceremonies in 1955 for a church in Moab on land donated by Charlie Steen," according to Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776-2007, by Bernice Maher Mooney and Msgr. J. Terrence Fitzgerald.

The church was named in honor of Saint Pius X, who was pope from 1903 to 1914. It was dedicated Nov. 7, 1955. The first pastor was Father Thomas J. Kaiser; he moved to Moab from Monticello, where he had been appointed resident priest in 1953.

IF YOU GO:

Saint Pius X Catholic Church is located at 122 West 400 South in Moab. The Saturday vigil Mass is at 5 p.m. Sunday Mass is at 9 a.m.