Category: PR Media

Executive director of ACTS XXIX delivers a keynote during a national town hall event for Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services

DETROIT – In a culture where people are deeply afraid of death and dying, Christ wants to use those tasked with burying the dead to be a salve to those who are suffering and to remind them of Christ’s paradoxical message — that by dying on the cross, he has defeated death for all.

That was the message delivered to hundreds of funeral and cemetery workers May 12 during Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services’ national town hall event hosted at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Local CFCS workers attended the afternoon event in person, while hundreds of virtual attendees from across the United States watched a livestream provided by the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The retreat began with Mass celebrated by Fr. John Riccardo, executive director of ACTS XXIX, and welcoming remarks from Bob Hojnacki, director of cemeteries in the Archdiocese of Detroit, along with a brief statement from CFCS founder and CEO Robert Seelig.

Seelig, who recently celebrated his 20th anniversary with CFCS, reminded his colleagues that theirs is a ministry of faith to which Christ has called them.

“Christ has shown his hand on my shoulder, and he’s been sending me to do this work for 20 years,” Seelig said. “And so, I’d like you to imagine that when you’re meeting with a family, you’re serving one another (and) that Christ has his hand on your shoulder.”

Fr. Riccardo opened his keynote address by empathizing with his listeners. Priests, like those who work in cemeteries and funeral services, are around death all the time, and it takes an emotional toll, Fr. Riccardo said.

“It’s emotionally taxing to give and to give and to give and to give to people when they’re in their weakest spots, at their most vulnerable spots and when they’re hurting the most,” Fr. Riccardo said. “So I pray that if nothing else, what we’re going to do right now is is something that the Lord will just refresh you with.”

Even with faith, this task can take its toll, Fr. Riccardo added.

“It can still be grating and challenging when infants die, when teenagers throw themselves in front of semi-trucks on the freeway, when spouses don’t go together,” he said. “So it’s good just to be reminded of the fact that God is in control when He has us, and we don’t have to be afraid.”

God hates death, Fr. Riccardo said, but He has done something about it by choosing to go to the cross, freely giving His life.

“(Christ being on the cross) is going to look like something disastrous is happening, but it only looks that way. It’s going to look like life is chaotic, it’s out of control, that there is no point,” Fr. Riccardo said. “It only looks that way. Life is not chaotic. It has a point. There is an author of the drama that is called history, which is ‘His story,’ and He knows what he’s doing.”

From mankind’s viewpoint, it might not always make sense, Fr. Riccardo said. Some might wonder why Jesus chose to be up on the cross, but by doing so, Christ has accomplished three things, Fr. Riccardo explained.

The first thing Christ accomplishes on the cross is show how much he loves us, Fr. Riccardo said.

“The message of the Gospel is really this simple: you matter to God. You’re worth fighting for. In fact, you’re worth dying for,” Fr. Riccardo said. “God just wants you to hear Him address you by name and tell you that He loves you.”

Secondly, Jesus is paying the price for our sins, Fr. Riccardo said. On the cross, Christ is atoning for the sins of everyone who has ever lived.

“We live right now in a culture that’s fond of canceling people,” Fr. Riccardo explained. “God has his own version of cancel culture: He canceled sin, not people. He knows your sin; He calls you by name.”

Our culture defines us by our sin, but Christ makes all things new; he takes our sin and allows us to become the person we wish to be, Fr. Riccardo said.

Finally, Christ on the cross is going to war, Fr. Riccardo said. Jesus is engaging hell, Satan and death in a battle. He allows himself to die so that he can enter death and destroy it from within. Even though we will still die, death cannot hold us because Christ has done something about it.

​​”Over and over again in the Easter season, we say things like, ‘Death has no more dominion over him. He died once; he’s alive now forever.’ Who else do you know you can say that about? So much is this true that the Christian actually taunts death. That’s what St. Paul does in his first letter to the Corinthians. ‘Where’s your sting? Where’s your victory?’

“Until I make sense out of my death, I’ll never be able to make sense out of my life,” Fr. Riccardo said. “I can live my life in such a way that I know death is not the end. Why? Because God’s done something about it.”

This knowledge changes how Christians live and frees them from the fear of death, and allows them to grieve in hope, Fr. Riccardo said.

“Everybody grieves. It’s just a question of how am I going to grieve? With hope or without hope?” he said.

Knowing Christ has conquered death allows those working in Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services to walk with those who are grieving, Fr. Riccardo said, giving them a scriptural lens to make sense of suffering and death by letting Christ shine through them.

“For whatever reason, God has placed you, at least at this point in your life, in people’s most painful moments, and he wants to use you as something like a salve, like an ointment that he can pour into their wounds to somehow give them strength and peace and hope in the midst of all their pain,” Fr. Riccardo said.

“This is a brutally hard mission,” he added. “It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is also a beautiful mission. It’s a spectacular mission. And it’s one in which I think if nothing else, the Lord through me right now simply wants to say to each and every one of you very personally, thank you for saying yes to it.”

Fourteen months into Pandemic, Catholic Cemetery Workers Reflect on Difficult Year, Pledge to Walk with Families Suffering Unexpected Loss

DETROIT — During the worst months of the pandemic, Detroit’s Catholic funeral and cemetery workers were among the most “essential” of essential workers.

It’s not how they wanted it, but it’s the reality everyone was dealt.

Long hours, difficult conversations — made more difficult by virus-mandated restrictions — and daily changing job roles made an already unfamiliar situation even more challenging for staff at Detroit-based Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services, whose responsibilities include maintaining a pastoral presence for those grieving the untimely death of a loved one.

Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron will celebrate a Mass on Thursday at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in recognition of the dedication cemetery and funeral staffers have shown in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Mass is just one way to show appreciation for those called to help families dealing with loss during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

“Early on in the pandemic, there were so many unknowns of how we were going to do things,” Bob Hojnacki, director of cemeteries for Detroit’s Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services (CFCS), told Detroit Catholic. “Things were changing on a weekly, daily to an almost hourly basis. We had to change a lot of our protocols and safety procedures for our staff, families and how we processed those changes.”

While parishes and schools ceased in-person operations, cemeteries had no such luxury.

Cemetery workers donned special equipment to keep them safe while burying COVID-related deaths. Other funeral staffers worked with families remotely, planning burial services at the cemetery when parishes were closed, establishing live streams so more than 10 people could witness funerals, and at times, being the sole witness of the departed’s burial.

“They were very much front-line workers, but not celebrated in the same way as health care workers,” said Robert Seelig, CEO for Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services, which operates in 15 dioceses across the country.

Seelig, who is based in the Diocese of San Jose, Calif., flew in to Detroit for today’s Mass, one of a series of Masses across the country celebrated for funeral and cemetery workers whose ministry is often conducted behind the scenes.

“On the one-year anniversary of the first COVID burial in California in the Diocese of San Jose, we did a Mass, but we couldn’t have one Mass that would say, ‘the pandemic is over,’” Seelig told Detroit Catholic. “We realized we needed to so a series of healing Masses for the workers, recognizing what they have gone through, but realizing that we’re all going through recovery at a certain level.”

The changing nature of government restrictions and knowledge about the spread and transmission of the virus was something cemetery staffers around the country had to adjust to, as Catholics were looking to cemeteries as one of the few places public worship was being done during the height of the lockdowns.

“We were one of the few, if not the only, ministry of the Catholic Church where employees had to continue to go to work,” Seelig said. “We went into crisis-management mode with daily national meetings with all of our directors and staff. We calmed everyone down and looked at what we could do.”

Turns out, what they “could do” was a lot.

Across the country, Catholic funeral workers changed their daily routines on the fly, meeting with families remotely, having staffers drive in separate cars when showing potential plots and investing in livestream technology to cater to families unable to travel or attend funerals in person.

“Early on, we had the family environmental specialists and grounds crew wear special suits and spray down the caskets when they would come in, and we weren’t allowing families to be around for the burial,” Hojnacki said. “Since then, learning what we know about COVID, we no longer are in suits, but we’re still keeping distances and have special proper equipment to handle the body and caskets. Families can watch the committal from a safe distance — 50 feet — and do a service prior to burial.”

Hojnacki said CFCS Detroit had an estimated 2,700 burials last year, just a bit more than the 2,400 it averages, with 375 of those being COVID-related burials.

Some cemeteries experienced backlogs, both because of the increase in burials and also because of families opting to wait for crowd size and travel restrictions to ease before interring cremated remains in a grove or niche in a mausoleum, Hojnacki said.

Despite the spiritually and physically taxing work, funeral and cemetery workers offered a critical ministry to suffering families often dealing with unexpected loss.

“Our staff has really stepped up,” Hojnacki said. “Early on, there were a lot of unknowns and a lot of anxiety, and we turned our switch to focus more on families who were having what we call ‘at-need’ deaths.”

“At-need” deaths are sudden deaths in which no prior arrangements were made. Families work with CFCS staff on planning a funeral, which is a difficult thing for families not expecting to do so.

Patricia Kade, a family service adviser at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield, works with families in pre-need and at-need planning. Normally, she would meet in person with families, walking them through the cemetery grounds or the mausoleum, explaining the options for burial and interment.

Despite meeting with families via Zoom now, Kade knows it’s her job to provide comfort and familiarity as families navigate a difficult and stressful time.

“If presented properly, families understand all the new restrictions and what needs to be done, and they accept it,” Kade said. “We provide compassion to people, answering their questions, guiding them through this process. We explain how we can have a committal ceremony that is socially distanced with people wearing masks, or with people staying in the car. We try to be flexible.”

Even weeks after the funeral, CFCS staffers have been calling families to check in on them, offering a listening ear and compassionate voice.

“We have received so many thank-you notes and feedback from families,” Kade said. “We pray every day for our families, for our staff and the people who just buried a loved one. We ask if there is anything they need, and often they say, ‘Thank you for making this easier.’ I think that keeps us going.”

That sense of gratitude extends to the grounds crew, who are charged with making sure cemeteries look their best as places of gathering and prayer.

“Families are looking for closure, and I believe my team’s job is to help provide that closure and ensure there’s care and love for the one who is being buried,” said Nicholas Acosta, operations manager for CFCS – Detroit, who oversees the grounds crews for all of the ministry’s Detroit locations. “We try to make sure families have the best — which is hard to say — but the best and most respectful manner in laying their loved ones to rest.”

Seeling said Catholic cemeteries throughout the country have embraced their role in providing a critical corporal work of mercy, especially when other Catholic ministries were limited by government restrictions, as an evangelization opportunity.

“Our cemeteries are actually places where Catholics, non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics are congregating,” Seelig said. “So we have this ministry opportunity, relating to Archbishop Vigneron’s Unleash the Gospel, of how do we invite people back to an experience within the Church? How do we reconnect them? We see the opportunity the Church has to minister to these families. You don’t have to go out and seek people in need; they come to our cemeteries every day.”

SOUTHFIELD — Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron celebrated an outdoor Mass on Saturday, June 5, at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield as he dedicated a new cremation garden and marble Stations of the Cross.

The new garden is meant to give families a serene place to walk in nature as they pray and memorialize their loved ones, said Deanne Cortese, outreach director for Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services in Detroit.

“This is what families are looking for,” Cortese said. “We looked at what a lot of cemeteries around the country are doing, and an outdoor Stations of the Cross where you can walk and reflect seemed like a good fit.”

The ceremony also included the blessing of a walking path and monument dedicated to the late Fr. Timothy Babcock, who served as chaplain for Catholic cemeteries in the Archdiocese of Detroit until his death in 2019.

To learn more about Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services, visit https://www.cfcsdetroit.org.

Photos by James Silvestri, Special to Detroit Catholic

To learn more about Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services, visit https://www.cfcsdetroit.org.

Over the past year, our nation has lost hundreds of thousands of souls to the pandemic that plunged our society into a crisis from which we are only now beginning to emerge. In a culture that traditionally relegates the topic of death to whispered, private conversation, we have been forced to confront head-on the fragility of our lives this side of the Kingdom of God.

Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services fill the void left by a society keeping death at arm’s length. This Church-owned nonprofit was established to walk with every Catholic through the experience of an end-of-life journey, fusing sound business and management principles with a concerted effort to unleash a renewed Catholic vitality, re-evangelizing Catholics about the hope and beauty found in the theology of Catholic end-of-life rites.

Death has been a source of both anxiety and fascination for humanity since the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, many find death to be a frightening prospect and spend their lives in search of distractions from its unrelenting finality. The Catholic response, however, has long been to emphasize death as a passage to eternal salvation. Catholic funeral rites, which are composed of the Vigil, the Funeral Liturgy, and the Committal, are designed to imitate and reflect the Christian hope that, in death, we find eternal life with our heavenly father.

“From beginning to end, a funeral evangelizes us, sharing the good news that God is near and that even in our sorrow, difficulties and distress, we can have joyful confidence in his providence,” Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron wrote in his 2018 pastoral note, An Act of Mercy and Faith. “On our end, through participating in the funeral liturgies, we proclaim to those who have little or no faith, or who do not practice it, the good news that God is mercy. We proclaim through our actions that we are certain that our loved ones are not memories, but that they are alive, they will arise and live for all eternity.”

Every detail of the rites is designed to remind those participating of their loved one’s eternal life. The coffin, for example, is clothed with the white pall, a reminder of our baptismal garment and the mark of eternal life. The sprinkling of holy water symbolizes our reverence for a body that will rise to meet its Savior on the last day. Far from a series of bleak gestures, the Catholic funeral rites are, to quote Pope Francis, “an act of great faith.”

They are also acts that fewer and fewer Catholics experience. With a culture ever more focused on clinging to youthful vitality, people today are less prepared to confront the reality of death, in particular the immediate need for a final resting place for the body. Further, the faithful increasingly view traditional end-of-life rites as exceedingly elaborate and overly costly. Shifting preferences and demographics, mounting costs, and an increase in secular competition have given rise to a dramatic shift toward cremation, with many opting to keep or scatter the cremated remains of their loved ones.

Whereas the 1950s saw a booming demand for cemetery plots, the cremation rate today in most parishes averages about 40 percent, with some dioceses seeing cremation rates as high as 75 percent. The 15 years between 2000 and 2015 saw a 30 percent drop in Catholic casketed services and a more than 200 percent rise in Catholic cremation services. And while the Church does not expressly prohibit cremation, its rise in popularity prompted the Vatican recently to reiterate its requirement that cremated remains be buried on sacred ground. Changing behaviors present new opportunities for the Church to reach people.

Amid the ongoing pandemic, it becomes immeasurably more important to accompany the faithful — devout or otherwise — through one of life’s most painful moments. Taking its cue from Pope Francis, CFCS works to evangelize the faithful using the beauty and meaning of Catholic end-of-life rites, which emphasize that the bodies of our dead are not keepsakes for the living, but rather remain temples for the Almighty in the next life. 

Those evangelization efforts are amplified by the application of financial acumen to run diocesan funeral and cemetery programs like a business primed for success. For instance, principles like the 80/20 rule help the typical cash poor but land rich diocese better leverage its assets. CFCS also employs a two-pronged approach of running diocesan cemetery programs like a start-up while using fine-tuned messaging and business savvy, which has taken funeral and cemetery operations from the red to the green in every single diocese where CFCS has been used, without reliance upon perpetual care funds that should be carefully guarded.

CFCS has established a 6 percent annual growth rate in the Oakland, Calif., diocese, for example, increasing available equity by $24 million and ensuring for the care of an aging cemetery system. This not only stabilized that diocese’s funeral and cemetery programs but led to a sizable surplus to subsidize other important ministries. End-of-life pro

Over the past year, our nation has lost hundreds of thousands of souls to the pandemic that plunged our society into a crisis from which we are only now beginning to emerge. In a culture that traditionally relegates the topic of death to whispered, private conversation, we have been forced to confront head-on the fragility of our lives this side of the Kingdom of God.

Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services fills the void left by a society keeping death at arm’s length. This Church-owned nonprofit was established to walk with every Catholic through the experience of an end-of-life journey, fusing sound business and management principles with a concerted effort to unleash a renewed Catholic vitality, re-evangelizing Catholics about the hope and beauty found in the theology of Catholic end-of-life rites.

Death has been a source of both anxiety and fascination for humanity since the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, many find death to be a frightening prospect and spend their lives in search of distractions from its unrelenting finality. The Catholic response, however, has long been to emphasize death as a passage to eternal salvation. Catholic funeral rites, which are composed of the Vigil, the Funeral Liturgy, and the Committal, are designed to imitate and reflect the Christian hope that, in death, we find eternal life with our heavenly father.

“From beginning to end, a funeral evangelizes us, sharing the good news that God is near and that even in our sorrow, difficulties and distress, we can have joyful confidence in his providence,” Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron wrote in his 2018 pastoral note, An Act of Mercy and Faith. “On our end, through participating in the funeral liturgies, we proclaim to those who have little or no faith, or who do not practice it, the good news that God is mercy. We proclaim through our actions that we are certain that our loved ones are not memories, but that they are alive, they will arise and live for all eternity.”

Every detail of the rites is designed to remind those participating of their loved one’s eternal life. The coffin, for example, is clothed with the white pall, a reminder of our baptismal garment and the mark of eternal life. The sprinkling of holy water symbolizes our reverence for a body that will rise to meet its Savior on the last day. Far from a series of bleak gestures, the Catholic funeral rites are, to quote Pope Francis, “an act of great faith.”

They are also acts that fewer and fewer Catholics experience. With a culture ever more focused on clinging to youthful vitality, people today are less prepared to confront the reality of death, in particular the immediate need for a final resting place for the body. Further, the faithful increasingly view traditional end-of-life rites as exceedingly elaborate and overly costly. Shifting preferences and demographics, mounting costs, and an increase in secular competition have given rise to a dramatic shift toward cremation, with many opting to keep or scatter the cremated remains of their loved ones.

Whereas the 1950s saw a booming demand for cemetery plots, the cremation rate today in most parishes averages about 40 percent, with some dioceses seeing cremation rates as high as 75 percent. The 15 years between 2000 and 2015 saw a 30 percent drop in Catholic casketed services and a more than 200 percent rise in Catholic cremation services. And while the Church does not expressly prohibit cremation, its rise in popularity prompted the Vatican recently to reiterate its requirement that cremated remains be buried on sacred ground. Changing behaviors present new opportunities for the Church to reach people.

Amid the ongoing pandemic, it becomes immeasurably more important to accompany the faithful — devout or otherwise — through one of life’s most painful moments. Taking its cue from Pope Francis, CFCS works to evangelize the faithful using the beauty and meaning of Catholic end-of-life rites, which emphasize that the bodies of our dead are not keepsakes for the living, but rather remain temples for the Almighty in the next life. 

Those evangelization efforts are amplified by the application of financial acumen to run diocesan funeral and cemetery programs like a business primed for success. For instance, principles like the 80/20 rule help the typical cash poor but land rich diocese better leverage its assets. CFCS also employs a two-pronged approach of running diocesan cemetery programs like a start-up while using fine-tuned messaging and business savvy, which has taken funeral and cemetery operations from the red to the green in every single diocese where CFCS has been used, without reliance upon perpetual care funds that should be carefully guarded.

CFCS has established a 6 percent annual growth rate in the Oakland, Calif., diocese, for example, increasing available equity by $24 million and ensuring for the care of an aging cemetery system. This not only stabilized that diocese’s funeral and cemetery programs but led to a sizable surplus to subsidize other important ministries. End-of-life programs are now becoming financial lifelines for ministries and programs supporting school children and families.

Perhaps more significantly, CFCS found a model that might serve the Church’s many noble nonprofit initiatives seeking to share and educate on foundational Catholic theology. In the Detroit archdiocese, CFCS programs are integrated in support of the region’s overarching mission to “Unleash the Gospel.” Departments and resources that were once siloed are now integrated and mutually supportive. 

Pope Francis once warned that “if the Church is not on the move, she decays, she becomes something else.” CFCS took the principle of “innovate or die” to the changing business of death, giving it a new life of its own and helping to shed the light of Christ on the specter of death so that the bereaved and all the faithful may see it clearly for what it is: the passage to eternal salvation with Christ. 

Robert Seelig is the CEO of Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services and Fr. Jeffrey Day is the Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia, Archdiocese of Detroit.

grams are now becoming financial lifelines for ministries and programs supporting school children and families.

Perhaps more significantly, CFCS found a model that might serve the Church’s many noble nonprofit initiatives seeking to share and educate on foundational Catholic theology. In the Detroit archdiocese, CFCS programs are integrated in support of the region’s overarching mission to “Unleash the Gospel.” Departments and resources that were once siloed are now integrated and mutually supportive. 

Pope Francis once warned that “if the Church is not on the move, she decays, she becomes something else.” CFCS took the principle of “innovate or die” to the changing business of death, giving it a new life of its own and helping to shed the light of Christ on the specter of death so that the bereaved and all the faithful may see it clearly for what it is: the passage to eternal salvation with Christ. 

Robert Seelig is the CEO of Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services and Fr. Jeffrey Day is the Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia, Archdiocese of Detroit.