+ Rest in Peace +

Fr Raymond Otto, O.S.B.

1942 - 2003

Wake: Monday 11/24/03 at 7:30 pm
Funeral: Tuesday 11/25/03 at 2:30 pm
 

   On November 22, 2003, our confrere, Father Raymond Otto, OSB, died at Milbank Area Hospital/Avera.  He had been hospitalized for less than twenty-four hours with a blood disorder.

    Father Ray was born in Evansville Indiana on March 21, 1942.  Attending St. Placid Hall, the secondary school for brotherhood candidates at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey, he learned the electrician’s trade.  He did not enter monastic life, however, upon graduating from high school.  After serving in the U.S. Army, he entered the novitiate at Blue Cloud Abbey in 1967.  He worked here as an electrician.  Later he practiced the same trade at St. Paul’s Indian Mission, Marty, South Dakota, as well as prefecting in the boarding school.  From 1974 until 1976, he assisted Father Wilfrid Lambertz in the pastoral work at St. Michael’s Indian Mission in North Dakota.  This experience led to his studying for the priesthood at St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota and Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, Wisconsin.  He was ordained at the abbey in 1982 by Bishop Paul V. Dudley.  Father Ray’s first parish was St. Anthony’s on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.  Here in South Dakota, he was named pastor at Waubay and Grenville in 1989.  At the time of his death, he was pastor of the parishes in BigStone City and Revillo, while also serving in Milbank as chaplain at St. William’s Nursing Home and the hospital.      

     For two years, Father Ray was our Vocation Director.  He liked working with youth and was involved with the Teens Encounter Christ program here and in North Dakota.  He made friends easily, and he had lots of friends to whom he remained faithful.  The monks were often surprised by how many people knew Father Ray.   His death came as a terrible shock to all of us.  What he had presumed was a touch of the flu, proved to be something more fatal.  Father Ray, like several other members of our community, died early—in the manner of our reckoning.  Yet his leaving us now is a reminder once again that St. Benedict himself suggests we not look at death distantly but daily. 

    We ask the members of the Swiss-American Congregation and all other Benedictines to remember Father Raymond in their prayers for the deceased.  His funeral and burial were on November 25, 2003.  May he rest in peace.

                                                 Abbot Thomas Hillenbrand, OSB
                                            & the Community of Blue Cloud Abbey
                                                         Marvin, South Dakota