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Catholic Cemetery Conference:
58th Annual Convention and Exposition
Cemeterians discuss trends, challenges of profession
By Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
October 4, 2007
The Catholic Cemetery Conference wrapped up its 58th Annual Convention and Exposition with a Mass and banquet Sept. 22.
The yearly convention allows cemetery directors and their associates from across the country to share ideas with each other and develop new ways of serving those in need.
At their heart, cemetery directors can “bear witness to the resurrection of the body,” said Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted at the closing Mass.
“Little things matter. They certainly matter at times of death: kindness, kind words, kind actions,” the bishop said during his homily.
By providing professional service with these little details, cemetery directors can help the families of the deceased “regain, if they lost it, confidence in Jesus’ words: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.’”
After the Saturday evening Mass, the 400 attendees enjoyed a banquet and a few more hours of each other’s company before parting ways until next year’s convention in Orlando, Fla.
Sharing ideas and facing challenges
Gary Brown, executive director of Catholic Cemeteries in the Phoenix Diocese, said it’s important for cemetery directors to meet yearly because “there’s so much that’s going on.”
“These are the topics we talk about: what’s new in the business, trends that are happening, how are we going to compete with the conglomerates and others in the business,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important every year.”
One topic for discussion this year was witnessing to society that Catholic funeral rites remain relevant.
“Sometimes it seems like the service is all about what the person has done and little to do with what God has done and continues to do,” said Fr. Stephen Bird, of the Office of Worship and Spiritual life for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, in a talk Sept. 21.
He said that, through the Catholic tradition of caring for the dead, the faithful departed and their families are seen in their relationship to God.
“We need to rediscover the riches of what the Catholic Church offers,” he said. “We need to explore what the Catholic ritual provides.”
Fr. Bird also talked about proper procedure for the cremation of a body. While Catholic teaching permits cremation, it is not to be done before the funeral. The Church strongly prefers the presence of the body because it calls to mind the life and death of the person, he said.
The cremated remains are also to be kept in a respectable, public place, like a Catholic cemetery, where future generations can visit, he said.
Promoting Church-approved burial rites is important, especially in the face of an ever-increasingly secular society, said Mark R. Lazaroski, president of the Catholic Cemetery Conference.
“Secularism has led to the degradation of burial traditions,” he said. “We’re dealing with the issues of a disposable society.”
Burial traditions realized
Attendees at the convention saw how Catholic burial traditions are put into practice Sept. 19. Roughly 200 conference guests boarded four tour buses for a trip through half of the diocese’s cemeteries.
Queen of Heaven Cemetery and its new mortuary — the first Catholic mortuary in Phoenix — proved to be the tour’s highlight.
A number of the attendees took photographs of the site, which includes many works of art, including a stained glass window of Mary, Queen of Heaven, on the chapel’s main wall.
“We wanted art to stand out and say, ‘This is our faith,’” Brown said during a large group presentation in the chapel at Queen of Heaven.
He also pointed out an original woodcarving that hangs on the mortuary’s wall and depicts St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.
Other tour stops included St. Francis Cemetery, the diocese’s oldest, and Holy Redeemer Cemetery. Many admired the director’s challenge of landscaping the facility.
Its location within a desert preserve area means every tree, shrub and flower must be of a desert character.
“They seem to be pretty good stewards of the land,” said Ann Glas, manager of cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Preparing for the unthinkable
A new initiative that the Catholic Cemetery Conference has undertaken is participating in government meetings for preparedness in time of an emergency.
“Disasters frequently overwhelm local systems that care for the deceased,” Lazaroski said during a special report from the conference’s Mass Fatality Management Subcouncil Sept. 22.
“Consequently, the responsibility for immediate response falls on local organizations and communities. Cemeteries are one of those organizations,” he said.
According to Fr. Patrick Pollard, director of cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Chicago and a member of the subcouncil, Catholic cemetery directors will have to act with care and compassion in the face of chaos.
“We have to deal with death and we have to deal with it with reverence and respect,” he said, whether the emergency be a natural disaster, pandemic or terrorist attack.
“We can’t choose a military approach in a time of disaster, where we’re going to simply dig trench graves and place bodies in there for public health,” he said.
In order to provide their indispensable services during an emergency, cemetery directors will have to be fearless and steadfast, Fr. Pollard said.
“We have to be ready to deal with the fear of our own employees, fearful to leave their homes and their families to come to work,” he said. “We have to be able to allay their fears of the infectiousness of the disease. We have to be knowledgeable ourselves.”
Gaining knowledge in all aspects of the cemetery business was a theme running throughout the convention.
William Burbatt, director of information technologies for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said he comes to the convention every year because “everybody’s got a good idea.”
“We come out here and every year I’m amazed. Somebody’s developed a way to do something different or more unique, a better way to do a brochure or handle something online,” he said. “It’s been a great conference.”
Ambria Hammel and J.D. Long-Garcia contributed to this story.
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