Ordinary Time in the Catholic Cemetery

Transcription

1 Ordinary Time in the Catholic Cemetery a Letter From CCC Vice President, Richard Peterson, CCCE, CCE Dear CCC Friends: Richard P. Peterson, CCCE, CCE I begin by thanking Steve Bittner, President of the Catholic Cemetery Conference, for this opportunity to write to our CCC members in the monthly magazine. As Steve has stated in his previous letters, he values team, and as both team member and coach of the CCC Board of Directors, he shares this vision with the other Board members. I know that it is in this spirit that Steve has extended this opportunity to me. Steve s vision of team does not end with the Board. The team that Steve envisions is the entire CCC membership. Why? First of all, for the betterment of the Conference, and the networking and mutual support that comes along with it. And, most especially, so that each CCC member will have the opportunity of support, education and community while serving God s Kingdom in their dayto-day work, and service of burial of the dead and comforting His people. The Christmas season is behind us; we have finished wishing people a happy New Year; and, we are no longer writing 2016 instead of Winter is still with us, but signs of Spring are starting to appear. In the Pacific Northwest, this means that the rain is getting a few degrees warmer, there are more breaks in the rain, we might have an occasional sliver of blue sky (that s known as partly sunny in Seattle), and the daylight is lasting a little longer. This edition of Catholic Cemetery has as its focus a variety of cemetery operations: buildings and grounds maintenance post-winter, memorialization, and using technology to help us work smarter. It all sounds pretty ordinary, doesn t it? This time of year, between the celebration of Christmas and the discipline of Lent, is known by the Church as Ordinary Time. Interestingly, Ordinary Time, spread throughout the Church s liturgical year, marks the majority of the total time in the liturgical year (66%). I suppose this is to remind us that, after a while, the day-in and day-out of our lives begins to feel pretty darn ordinary, doesn t it? Life seems to be filled with the ordinary days, weeks and years that are then punctuated occasionally with extraordinary times. While the Ordinary Time of the Church s liturgical year is set and regular, the ordinary and extraordinary times of our lives (mine, yours and those whom we serve) all happen at intervals distinct from one another. None of us is on the same clock. As I write this letter, I know that in my own family, over the span of about three weeks, one of my nephew s and his wife s baby died pre-birth, my uncle died at the age of 88, the father of one of our cemetery managers died, and my wife and I learned that we will be grandparents this summer. Death and life; truly extraordinary times. So, as we look ahead to Spring and the normal everyday needs that must be fulfilled after winter maintenance of buildings and equipment, repair to graves opened during the winter, etc. we cemeterians begin preparations for our extraordinary times of Easter, Mother s Day, and a Memorial Day. But every day there are the families whom we encounter who are experiencing the extraordinary days of loss, bereavement, shock or anger. How do we respond to these encounters? The membership of the Catholic Cemetery Conference represents a breadth and depth of knowledge, commitment, and vocation of service as Catholic cemeterians. Our Catholic Cemetery Conference exists as a pre-eminent resource for all Catholic cemeteries. The Conference is here for all of its members. I take this opportunity to invite you to do two things: 1. Take Advantage of the Benefits of Belonging to the Catholic Cemetery Conference. g There are the major educational opportunities of the School of Leadership and Management Excellence at Notre Dame (June 11 14, 2017) and the annual Convention and Exposition in Summerlin, NV (September 19 22, 2017). I sincerely encourage you to attend both of these events this year. continued on page 6 Catholic Cemetery, February

2 Ordinary Time in the Catholic Cemetery, continued g Participate in the monthly Inviting Conversation 365 conference calls. These regularly scheduled conference calls allow members to learn about current and pending legislative activity that will affect our ministry. They are also an opportunity to learn from one another and assist each other with information and suggestions. The next call will be on February Get Involved and Give Back. Each member of the CCC is gifted and talented. Your involvement on the CCC team will only make us all better Catholic cemeterians. Your involvement and participation will pay dividends to you as well. There are a number of ways to get involved g If you have not yet done so, be sure to visit the CCC Membership Portal on the Website: If you don t yet have login information or have forgotten it, simply contact the National Office. There is a wealth of information, including a searchable list of all Cemetery and Supplier members, on this site. g Write articles for Catholic Cemetery. What, you re not a writer? No problem. Each Catholic cemetery has a story to tell about services provided, new developments or features, a special event or special recognition. Simply call the National Office. CCC staff will be happy to listen to you and fashion a story. All you really need to do is let them know. (Pictures are great, too!) g Join in on the Member Discussion Forum on the CCC Web page. Ask questions, provide perspectives and information to other members questions. It s easy. Simply log into the Membership Portal on CCC s Web page. g Serve on a committee. There are a wide range of committees, all of which need you. Information about the committees (including committee information and current committee members) is found in the annual CCC Member and Resource Directory at Your participation will benefit everyone. In closing, I encourage you to be active in your membership. Don t sit on the sidelines. Remember that every day, while seemingly ordinary for us, is extraordinary for someone else. In our chosen vocation as Catholic cemeterians, we encounter those people with more regularity than we even know. Today may be the first anniversary of a loved one s death, their first birthday since they died, or the day that they have to make arrangements. They turn to us. We, the members of CCC, have each other. May God continue to bless us all in our work and service, and may His Spirit be with those whom we serve. Sincerely yours in Christ, Richard P. Peterson, CCCE, CCE Vice President, Catholic Cemetery Conference Director of Cemeteries, Assoc. Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of Seattle 6 Catholic Cemetery, February 2017

3 Father Tolton s Remains Exhumed, Verified in Quincy, IL Cause for Sainthood Takes Step Forward by Joyce Duriga On the morning of Dec. 10 in a cemetery in Quincy, Illinois Father Augustus Tolton s cause for canonization took one step further as his remains were exhumed and verified. Father Tolton, a former slave, is the first recognized American diocesan priest of African descent. In 2011, the Archdiocese of Chicago officially opened his cause for sainthood. While digging up Father Tolton s grave may seem like a macabre undertaking and the antithesis of the prayer may they rest in peace, it is actually a reverent and well thought out part of church law regarding the remains of holy people. This goes back to a very ancient tradition in the Church for a number of reasons. One was to document that the person really existed and wasn t a figment of someone s imagination or some group s imagination. Finding their grave was the telltale sign that the person lived, breathed and walked this earth, said Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry, who is postulator of the priest s cause and one of the nation s African-American Catholic bishops. It s basically out of our theology, our tradition that our bodies are made holy in baptism and the reception of the Eucharist and eventually they rise to glory. So while we re treating everyone with dignity in life, even their remains are to be given a kind of reverential handling, said Bishop Perry. While Father Tolton died in Chicago in 1897, he requested to be buried in Quincy, which is in the Diocese of Springfield. He and his family had fled there after escaping slavery in nearby Missouri, and it s where he returned to minister after being ordained in Rome. He is buried in A white tent was put up to cover the remains and shelter the area being excavated. It s been 119 years since the death of Fr. Augustus Tolton. St. Peter s Cemetery in a plot with another Quincy priest. Today that cemetery is sandwiched in between KFC and Wendy s restaurants and located along a commercial shopping thoroughfare. The day before the exhumation, cemetery crews from the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Springfield dug 6 feet down into the clay-based soil to about 4 inches above Father Tolton s grave. They removed dirt from a 6-foot-by-11- foot space. Using sonar, they had already verified the grave s location. A white tent covered the remains and sheltered the small area from the elements. At 7:30 a.m. Dec. 10 crews and diocesan officials gathered for an opening prayer service at the grave site led by Springfield Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki. The Catholic Church through the Vatican Congregation for Saints Causes is very specific about how the process must go. There is a canon law that they have to follow that lays out exactly what has to be done and how it s done to the point that they called the workers together to swear an oath to diligence and professionalism, said Roman Szabelski, executive director, Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Canon law also requires that dioceses employ a forensic anthropologist, a medical examiner and archaeologist in the process. Those three men worked on removing the remainder of the soil and uncovered Father Tolton s body. It didn t take long to find the skeletal remains. Over time the earth had crushed the wooden coffin in which the priest was buried. They discovered the casket had a glass top because they found a significant amount of broken glass mixed in with the remains. At the time Father Tolton died, glass-topped coffins were used for people of position or who were well known. continued on page 17 Catholic Cemetery, February January

4 Fr. Tolton s Remains Exhumed, Verified, continued In addition to the skeletal remains, the crews found other items such as metal handles and wood from the coffin, the corpus from a crucifix buried with him, the corpus from his rosary and a portion of his Roman collar. The intent of all of this is preserving the remains we have of a possible saint. We want to make sure that anything that we find is preserved so it will go into a sealed casket and from the sealed casket into a sealed vault, Szabelski told the Catholic New World, Chicago s archdiocesan newspaper. Father Tolton s exhumation was slow going with a lot of hand digging with trowels and using soft brushes to unearth the remains to make sure as much as possible was preserved. This wasn t the first time archaeologist Deacon David Keene removed skeletal remains from the ground but it was the first time he did it for the Church. The difference between us and regular grave diggers is we just have an image of what we re looking for, of what it looks like under the ground, said Deacon Keene, who serves at Chicago s Holy Family Parish. If this was an unknown skeleton and we were just recovering it, it would take us longer because we would want to expose it all first, map it, photograph it, he said. But this is being done for the Church and to bring up these remains for reburial so we re going a little faster than usual. As the remains were unearthed, the forensic pathologist laid them out on a table in a mortuary bag under which was a new priest s alb. He pieced the bones together anatomically. Bishop Paprocki led everyone in the rosary while that was happening. In addition to the skull, they found Father Tolton s femurs, rib bones, vertebrae, collarbones, pelvis, portions Activity surrounding the exhumation of Father Tolton s remains which were to be indentified and verified. The remains were placed in a casket, and then into a sealed vault and will remain at St. Peters Cemetery for now. of the arm bones and other smaller bones. The forensic pathologist verified by the skull that the remains were of a black person. By the shape and thickness of bones in the pelvic area he was able to determine that the remains were from a male in his early 40s. Once all of the remains and artifacts were collected, the process to reinter Father Tolton began. Priests from Springfield vested the remains with a white Roman chasuble and maniple, amice and cincture. They were then placed in a new casket bearing a plate that identified him as Servant of God Augustus Tolton, along with his dates of birth, ordination and death. A document was placed on top of the remains attesting to the work done that day. Then they wrapped a red ribbon around the casket and sealed it with a wax seal of the Diocese of Springfield. The coffin was in turn placed in a burial vault with another inscription. A second vault held the broken glass and coffin parts and both containers were reinterred in the grave. A closing prayer service wrapped up the solemn process. Father Tolton received the title of servant of God when his cause was officially opened and a postulator was named. If the Vatican determines he led a heroic life of Christian virtues, the Church bestows the title Venerable. After that stage, the next steps would be beatification and canonization. In general, two miracles determined to have occurred through the candidate s intercession are needed for sainthood one for beatification and the second for canonization. His grave will only be opened again if Father Tolton is beatified, said Bishop Perry. So far two miracles are possible and have been sent to Rome, where they are being looked into, he noted. We received about 50 some testimonials of people from all over the country testifying to favors from God through Tolton s intercession. Remarkable things everything from needed employment to illness in the family to all kinds of problems, the bishop said. These people are really just excited about their prayers being answered because of him. He s been pretty active up there, I think. He probably needs a secretary up there to handle all that has been put on his lap. Y Article is reprinted with permission from the Catholic NewWorld, 12/27/16. Catholic Cemetery, February 17

5 Cathedral Cemetery, Serving Wilmington for 140 Years by Mark A. Christian, CCCE The Catholic population in the city of Wilmington was growing at a fast pace in the mid 19th century, with eight city parishes being founded from 1858 through These new parishes did not own enough ground for their own churchyards so a decision was made to open a regional Catholic cemetery outside the city limits. In June 1875, Right Reverend Thomas A. Becker, D.D. purchased a farm on the outskirts of the City of Wilmington on Lancaster Pike as the site for the New Cathedral Cemetery. A year later in June 1876, it was consecrated. The cemetery was designed as a rural garden cemetery noted for elaborate gatehouses and pastoral settings. Elaborate Victorian inspired brick gatehouses stood as gothic giants standing watch over the sacred grounds, monitoring the comings and goings of visitors. The first burial recorded at Cathedral Cemetery was on June 17, 1876 for Peter Feeney aged 29. During its first six months of operation there were 68 burials with many of these being infants and young children. The largest number of burials in any given year was in 1918 with 1,003 The Garden of Eternal Life with the 15 Stations of the Cross. burials recorded. This was the year that the Spanish flu pandemic hit the country beginning in October. Many of the burials at the height of the epidemic were made in long trenches opened with a massive steam shovel with the bodies merely wrapped in shrouds. As of June 2016, there are over 60,800 burials in the cemetery. Until the end of World War II, all graves were dug by hand with caskets going directly into the ground or encased in wooden outer boxes. Very few families had brick vaults built on site in which caskets were placed. It was common practice to mound the graves with all the dirt that was removed for burial to compensate for the sinking caskets. This explains why the ground may be uneven and monuments tilted in the older parts of the cemetery. After the 1940 s concrete outer burial containers became the norm to hold caskets, and this alleviated the constant sinking of the grounds and shifting of monuments. Some of the older shaft monuments located at the cemetery. In the early days the cemetery, streets had names such as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James and St. Mary. In addition to the roads, each section was designed with three walkways designed to accommodate a rider on a horse. The many old curbstones were designed to be stepping stones for those dismounting. They were never intended as memorials for the deceased and were used to help visitors locate their family plots. 26 Catholic Cemetery, February 2017