Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Reverend Robert Bussen, better known along the Wasatch Back as Father Bob from St. Mary's Catholic Church near Park City who likes to wear cowboy boots can sometimes be seen skiing in his vestment hitting the slopes before or after church.
Monsignor Robert Bussen may have stepped away from full-time work in a Utah Catholic parish, but he will not be slowing down in any sense.
You’ll still see Father Bob, as he is known, preaching, officiating, and celebrating Mass in any parish that needs him and speaking out on issues that trouble him, including immigration reform and gay rights.
You’ll also spot him (sometimes in clerical collar and always with his signature earring) skiing, biking mountain trails, hiking the redrock country or maybe even running a marathon.
Bussen, one of the Beehive State’s most visible priests, retired last month, but has no specific plans for the next phase of his life, beyond moving from his latest parish in Cedar City to a house he owns in Park City.
“I am not closing any options,” the energetic clergyman says. “I am open to do anything the diocese asks me to do.”
Bussen is so “generous with his time,” says Monsignor Terrence Fitzgerald, another Utah priest supposedly retired but who still works at the diocese about six to eight hours a day. “He has been very concerned about defending the vulnerable — the Hispanics, disabled, gays and lesbians, and minorities. He was also very involved with the interfaith and civic groups in the community.”
Father Bob “is well educated, talented and gifted,” says Fitzgerald, who has known his fellow priest for nearly five decades. “He contributed so much everywhere he went.”
It’s been a winding road for Bussen, born in St. Louis in 1946. He moved to Utah with his family as a teen, weaving through Weber High School, the University of Utah and Utah State University, as well as various assignments at Catholic churches to the north and the south, with a stint at diocesan headquarters in Salt Lake City.
He’s seen his American church ripped apart by priest abuse allegations and convictions, a changing papacy, debates over homosexuality and battles over immigrants.
After graduating from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver in 1968, and then being ordained in Rome in 1971, Bussen worked in various positions in Salt Lake City until he was moved to a Logan parish as pastor from 1976 to 1985. While there, he earned a master of business administration from USU, bringing economic skills to his work as a priest.
Bussen returned to Utah’s capital in 1985 as vicar general — the diocese’s second in command under former Bishop William Weigand. It was in that role that he first confronted abuse allegations leveled against another priest, which Bussen and the bishop publicly acknowledged.
When Weigand was tapped as bishop of Sacramento, Calif., in 1994, Bussen moved to St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Park City, where he remained for 16 years — and built a new church and parish center for a flock that ballooned from 150 to 1,200 families, championed immigrant workers, condemned educational inequality, celebrated Mass for gays and lesbians, and spoke out against pedophilia.
In 2002, when Heber Valley authorities were teeming with federal agents corralling undocumented Latino workers, Bussen went on the offensive, calling out local and federal officials. The bitter public jousting that followed the crackdown helped curtail the roundups and eventually gave way to a more accepting atmosphere for immigrants.
But he got plenty of “pushback for his outspokenness,” the priest recalls now.
Five years later, Father Bob took up another cause – the place of gays in the church.
In 2007, he determined that gays and lesbians needed a chance to celebrate the Eucharist (Communion) in an affirming way, so he launched a monthly Mass for them. It lasted all of three months.
Conservative members of the parish complained and it became a divisive issue. Bussen made the painful choice to drop it.
“It was the right decision,” he says now. “As a Catholic Church, we were not ready to do that. We still aren’t. We’ve got some growing up to do.”
Bussen thinks fondly of his time in Park City as a chance to build not just a new structure, but a Catholic community that he “cherished.”
That’s also where he developed connections to the wider community, he says.
Next, after a yearlong sabbatical, where he made a pilgrimage in Spain, studied in Belgium and vacationed in New Zealand, Bussen was posted to Cedar City.
There, he traveled to small “mission churches” in Kanab, Panguitch, Bryce, Escalante, Duck Creek and Beaver – some of the state’s most stunning landscapes.
He came to appreciate these communities and their thriving cultural life, he says. “A nice variety of folks took me in and made me feel I belonged there.”
As he retires, Father Bob says he doesn’t want a packed agenda, except to lift and love his community. And maybe spend a little time with friends and, of course, skiing.
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