JULY 10
On this day in 2000, Father Lawrence Kratz, a founding member of our community, died at St. William’s Nursing Home in Milbank. He had been a resident there for the past year and a half. Father Lawrence was born on December 7, 1912 in Evansville, Indiana. At the age of 34, he entered the novitiate at St. Meinrad’s Arch- abbey, and professed vows there on August 1, 1947. He was ordained to the priesthood at St. Meinrad on May 3, 1952. Father Lawrence was a convert to Catholicism. He often repeated the story about his Lutheran grandmother’s introduction to Arch- abbot Ignatius Esser on her first visit to St. Meinrad’s. She admired his pectoral cross, and asked where she might procure one like it for her grandson.
      As a young man, Father Lawrence had joined an archeological expedition to the Yucatan. This experience formed his enduring love for the lands and peoples south of our border. He located the site for our foundation in Guatemala, and helped get it off the ground before answering a request to assist the St. Meinrad monks with their work in Peru. Father Lawrence spent a good number of years as the pastor of a barrio parish in Lima. Before either of these assignments, he had assisted the monks from St. Joseph’s Abbey, Louisiana, at Guatemala’s national shrine in Esquipulas.
      During the construction era at Blue Cloud Abbey, Father Lawrence was in charge of the appeal office. A benefactor once told him that he had the “ability to charm the birds out of the trees.” He did indeed have a way that endeared him to people. He was a good-natured man. When he returned to this country, Father Lawrence spent several summers in the Red River Valley ministering to Mexican- American migrants who labored in the sugar beet fields of North Dakota and Minnesota. His Spanish-speaking parishioners called him “Padrecito.” So did many of his monastic confreres. And there were four young men who called him “Grandpa.” When Father Lawrence was in Peru, he was the friend of a family whose son he brought to this country to attend high school. Gustavo stayed here and married. Father Lawrence was very proud of Gustavo and Susan’s four sons. One of them once baffled a playmate by telling him, “Our grandpa is coming to see us. He’s a priest.” Father Lawrence also befriended a family on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, where he had been stationed for several years following his ordination. The Merrick Family visited him at Blue Cloud, and several of the sons attended his funeral.
      Father Lawrence’s last assignment was in Watertown as chaplain for the Benedictine Sisters at Mother of God Monastery. During this time his health began failing. The last year of his life, he was confused, and sometimes he appeared not to recognize his own confreres. He remained jovial, however, to the end of his life here on earth.