On a warm Saturday evening in October, a dozen young professional single men in their 20s brought their Catholic household into the street outside their St. Paul, Minnesota, duplex, showing neighbors, friends and family that their community life is about fun as well as faith. 

At their second-annual “Bosco Fest,” block party, the men of Don Bosco House (DBH) got their city and neighbors to agree to close off the block so they could offer live music from their open porch, bring in a food truck, and provide games and a movie for the mostly-young-adult crowd. The party takes its name from the house’s patron, 19th-century Italian Salesian priest St. John Bosco (also called “Don Bosco”), who is known for his work with young people.  

“We witness to what we’ve built here, which non-Catholics should be able to see as something that’s good, something that’s really fruitful, but it’s not specifically religious,” said Michael Ennis, 23, current leader of the intentionally Catholic house and has lived there for two years.  

Fun isn’t the top priority for men at “The Bosco,” ages 21 to 25, who are mostly in their first post-college professional jobs. But they say seeking holiness and preparing for their vocations is richer in community as they encourage each other, observe Catholic seasons together and share social and service opportunities through their combined friends network. 

The housemates want to live and grow together in Catholic community as a normal aspect of life and integrate it into their lives after household living, said Derrick Diedrich, 25, who with several roommates founded DBH in 2022 and lived there until leaving in August to study for his MBA at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. 

So far, seven of the 22 housemates have gone on to marriage. 

“This isn’t the pinnacle of our life,” Diedrich said. “It’s a step in our life, a very formative and joyful step, but the Lord’s calling is something greater. The guys live inspired lives.” 

Diedrich and several then-housemates who also graduated from the University of St. Thomas (UST) in St. Paul, started envisioning a Catholic professional men’s household in 2021.  

As Diedrich sought a new location for the household, a landlord showed him a 3,500-square-foot lower unit after seeing the smaller upstairs apartment. He saw potential in the place, but his roommates remained skeptical. 

“I only had two other guys I was living with, and there’s this big seven-bedroom house and the rent was $3,400 [per month], which would be ridiculous,” Diedrich said. 

He didn’t give up the idea — and while praying for a patron saint, St. John Bosco came to mind. Not knowing about Diedrich’s prayer, a roommate had an experience with the saint later that day, leading Diedrich to believe the saint had chosen them, he said.   

Their patron inspires a focus on prayer and work, Diedrich said. “We’re a young professional house, and I think that work aspect is a big part of our lives,” he said. “So to see that connected to our spiritual lives and in community with each other was definitely his intercession.” 

Diedrich searched his UST and other contacts for housemates who were Catholic, or converting to the faith, and who wanted community life, agreed to a cleanliness standard and were willing to forego pets. Diedrich filled the house; but after the first year, five of the housemates left to get married. He also took an opportunity to rent the duplex’s three-bedroom upper unit — and, once again, he scrambled to find housemates. 

Now better known in its third year, DBH has a waiting list, said Richard Beck, 25, a medical device manager and one of the early housemates. Half the men are engineers, along with a youth minister, law student and two who work in finance.  

The duplex’s top apartment is known as the “upper Bosco” or “penthouse suite,” while a basement guest suite is named for St. Dominic Savio, a student of St. John Bosco who died as a teenager. 

When their schedules line up, housemates share meals in the tidy, clean kitchen on the main floor or pray the Liturgy of the Hours in the adjoining spacious common room. The household gathers for a monthly dinner in their dining room that features a large crucifix and religious art.  

Along with the house’s three full-sized refrigerators, a smaller communal beverage refrigerator is covered on one side with former housemates’ wedding pictures.  

Common life in DBH gives men time to transition and grow together while discerning marriage or a celibate vocation, Ennis said, adding that the goal is not only vocational preparation but the purification God wants from all the housemates. 

“I think what the Lord calls everyone to do is discern well, but prepare yourself tactically, like, spiritually, physically, all of these things,” Ennis said. “This house has really allowed, I think, a lot of people to do that well.”  

 

Fraternal Fellowship 

There is no lack of fellowship, Beck said. 

The housemates belong to different nearby parishes but often go together to receive sacraments, to Eucharistic adoration or attend the Easter vigil or other liturgies, he said. 

Their patron’s Jan. 31 feast day is another big DBH celebration with friends that includes Mass, dinner at an Italian restaurant (with a large portrait of the saint on the table) and dessert.  

“That’s something we really want to emphasize, going to the sacraments together, because I think that ultimately builds the closest community and union with each other and with the Lord,” said Ennis, a mechanical engineer who moved into DBH for brotherhood with other men also seeking something greater in their faith. He said household life has taught him about conflict resolution, respect and loving others.  

Jon May, also a mechanical engineer who became Catholic in 2022, considered the benefits of communal life.  

“I got to the point in my life where I was ready to do what the Lord called me to do to be an adult, to be a man, and to step into that position he’s set before me,” he said.  

Housemates hold each other accountable — in household chores, fitness challenges or prayer, said Beck, who also entered the Catholic faith in 2021.   

Weekly chores are tracked on a chore chart and housemates pay a fine if they fail to complete them. “We try and hold a pretty high standard of cleanliness,” Beck said, adding that the fines and a house fund all help cover costs of events such as Bosco Fest. 

“You don’t want to get razzed and hazed when you come up the stairs at 7:30 [a.m.], that you weren’t up at 6:05, so then you get up.” 

As iron sharpens iron, Ennis said, “we are always calling each other on and encouraging each other, and a lot of times that involves fraternal correction, which is a very difficult thing to do well and to be taken well,” he said.  

 

Lasting Formation 

Abby Myhra, a frequent DBH guest when her now-husband, Dan Myhra, lived there the year before their marriage in 2023, remembers the men’s accountability, their intentionality about prayer, how they kept up the house and their Lenten penances. Abby said she is grateful for the good habits Dan formed in the house. The couple welcomed their first child in September. 

“My husband has such a solid prayer life and understanding of what it means to be a good man, and I think that was largely due to many of them being engaged at the same time,” Abby said. “I think they were able to kind of walk together and [consider together]: What is it going to be like to be a husband and a father?” 

Former housemates’ wives have appreciated the house’s discipline, too, Diedrich said.  

“That was always the joke, that anytime there’s an open spot, it’s not guys trying to get in the house — it’s girlfriends trying to get guys in the house because they know how the guys come out of the house,” he said.

 Earlier this year, DBH members organized a house reunion and, to their surprise, St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Bernard Hebda accepted their invitation to attend, offering the current and former housemates, wives and girlfriends a reflection on the importance of young people investing in their faith and living in community, Diedrich said. 

Now a DBH alumnus, Diedrich said he will stay in contact with the house but doesn’t plan to move back in if he returns to Minnesota.  

“We’re not in the Don Bosco House to live forever and have a career in the house, but to look forward to our vocations,” he said. “What is the Lord asking us to do?” 

May agreed that life at “The Bosco” is for a season.  

“When you’re discerning marriage and when you feel that’s where the Lord's calling you, you only get so many years that you can live with 11 other guys,” May said. “It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have this. You get brothers.”