Eternal rest grant unto him Fa t h e r D e ni s Me a de , O S B
Born • October 16, 1930 Professed • July 11, 1950 Ordained • June 28, 1955 Died • June 18, 2019 •
Requiescat in Pace
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What do you want to be when you grow up? As children, we might respond in all sorts of ways: “I want to be a cowboy!” Or, “I want to be a zookeeper!” Or, “I want to travel the world!” If you heard someone say, “I want to be a lawyer, a priest, a professor, and travel the world!” you would probably look at them like they were way too ambitious (and a little crazy), but for Fr. Denis Meade, that was his life – he accomplished all of that, and much more. Born in 1930, James Thomas Meade was raised in rural Madison County, Iowa, near the small town of Cumming. Fr. Denis enjoyed relating a bit of trivia in that the Meade family home would later be used to shoot scenes for the 1995 film The Bridges of Madison County. The youngest of nine children, Fr. Denis was raised in a faith-filled family, “my family always valued the priesthood,” Fr. Denis said, “I was grateful for that and decided that I wanted to be a priest.” Following God’s call at just 14 years old, he transferred from Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines, Iowa, to begin priesthood studies at Maur Hill Prep School in Atchison, Kansas. Following his graduation, he moved into the seminary at St. Benedict’s College in 1947, living as a “Hilltopper” and studying to be a diocesan priest. It was then he heard a new call, “I was thinking of being a diocesan priest, but when I discovered the community way of life, the community as a monastic family, that was very attractive to me, so I applied to enter the monastery.” In 1949, he entered the novitiate at St. Benedict’s Abbey receiving the monastic name Denis, so named for St. Denis of Paris. Completing the novitiate and professing first vows on July 11, 1950, Fr. Denis resumed his studies, earning a degree in history in 1952. “I thought, maybe I could be a teacher while being a priest and monk,” he said. In 1952, Abbot Cuthbert McDonald gave him the opportunity to study at Sant’Anselmo, the international Benedictine college in Rome. All the course work was in Latin, and he would have to learn Italian to live in Rome “It was a struggle, my Latin was passable and then, Italian! But with self-help books, you learned on your own.” In the 1950s, transatlantic travel was rare; for the next nine years Fr. Denis prayed and studied in Europe. He spent his summers exploring Bavaria, Austria, France, and Belgium. Though he was professing vows to St. Benedict’s Abbey, his solemn profession occurred at Montecassino on May 26, 1953. He would be ordained to the diaconate at the Abbey of Saint Paul de Wisques in France. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 28, 1955, at the Abbey of San Pietro in Assisi, Italy, by Bishop Placido Nicolini, OSB. The bishop had saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis as the mastermind of “The Assisi Underground.” Following his ordination Fr. Denis continued his European studies at the Lateran University in Rome, obtaining licensure and doctoral degrees (JCL and JCD) in Canon Law. In 1961, he returned to Atchison, and it was time to put his degree to work, “I was asked to teach basic theology to under-motivated freshman,” Fr. Denis often joked. 20
S t. B e n e d i c t ’ s A b b e y
