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Utah's Trappist monks have elected as their new abbot a 68-year-old man who has been a member of their community for 41 years.

The Rev. David Altman on Aug. 29 will receive a blessing from Bishop John Wester of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese in recognition of his election and installation last month to a six-year term as abbot. He succeeds the Rev. Casimir Bernas, who has moved on to new assignments within the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity.

"It's a position of service that I'm honored to accept," Altman said this week in an interview.

As abbot, he is responsible for the secular and spiritual affairs of the abbey, which is part of the Trappist-Cistercian Order. It has 19 professed members and three novitiates who spend most of their day in prayer, but support themselves by working an 1,800-acre ranch near Huntsville in the Ogden Valley, about 15 miles east of Ogden. The monks raise beef and produce and sell alfalfa, honey, peanut butter, cereal and other goods.

Altman said he is talking and praying with other members of the community to determine priorities as their new abbot.

Among issues facing the monks is whether to proceed with building plans the community put on hold.

Since coming to Utah from Kentucky in 1947, the monks have lived and worshipped in Quonset huts that have deteriorated with time. In recent years, they had engaged in fundraising to build a new monastery, but shelved that plan for further discussion, Altman said.

The community has a development fund and anticipates some repairs and remodeling, but also may opt to build a retreat center or something other than a new monastery.

Before becoming abbot, Altman, a native of Philadelphia, had been the abbey's treasurer for 25 years, and also served the needs of visitors.

He joined the abbey in 1966, and became a professed member of the community in 1973.

Altman said that as a young man, he resisted the call to the monastic life for some time. A graduate of Temple University in business, he was working as an accountant in Los Angeles and enjoying the good life when he first started feeling irresistibly drawn to a different sort of life.

"It became an insistent question that I had to answer for my own peace and happiness," he said.

Altman considered becoming a priest, but believed active ministry was not for him. Through reading and prayer, he instead found himself drawn to a contemplative religious order.

He ended up in Huntsville in part because the abbey at that time had faculty to train him for the priesthood, and he's remained there ever since.

"It's my life. It's where I find fulfillment and happiness," Altman said.

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* LISA CARRICABURU can be reached at lisac@sltrib.com or 801-257-8716. Send comments about this story to religioneditor@sltrib.com.