Cemetery information

• May non-Catholics be buried in a Catholic cemetery?
• How do I go about making arrangements?
• What are Burial Service Fees, and why are they so expensive?
• What do cemeteries offer to parents who have suffered miscarriage or stillbirth?

One of the saddest situations I encounter is when a daily Mass attendee, after decades of devotion, dies and does not receive a Catholic funeral or burial.

Usually, this happens when the deceased’s children are not practicing Catholics and, either through ignorance or rejection of the Faith, do not seek a funeral Mass for their devout parent.

Pastors have told me that they sometimes only find out weeks after someone stops coming to Mass that they died suddenly, and the family for whatever reason did not contact the parish or seek a Catholic funeral.

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Or: Why you should lay your loved ones to rest in a cemetery. 

Alvin Jones Sr., at only 57 years old, died on April 6, 2021. Requiescat in pace. You may have heard of his son, the Green Bay Packers’ elite running back, Aaron Jones. Jones lost a medallion containing some of his father’s ashes when it came loose from a chain he was wearing around his neck during a September 20 game against the Detroit Lions.

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This website gathers together royalty-free resources - video, audio, homilies, and curricula - about Catholic burial traditions, featuring Fr. Roger Landry, Dr. Scott Hahn, and Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, SJ, among others.

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St. Anthony the Great had a problem. He was 105 years old, he lived in fourth-century Egypt, and he was famous.

He did not want to be embalmed. But the common practice at the death of eminent personages such as himself was to preserve them, pose them on couches, and to keep them in their houses.

This was intended to honor the deceased.

Anthony knew that some of his fellow hermits might try something like that. So shortly before his death, he reminded them that the bodies of the patriarchs and prophets are preserved in tombs, and the very body of the Lord was laid in a tomb.

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In 2018, Archbishop Carlson of St. Louis advised Catholics “to avoid alkaline hydrolysis until another suitable means of disposing of the liquid remnant can be established.”

But there are many more options available to Catholics than are typically considered.

Often, Catholics want a burial that is faithful, affordable, and environmentally responsible. These are important priorities.

In part two of this article, I will suggest four choices faithful Catholics can make that are not often considered in the United States. But here, we will take a closer look at these three priorities.
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Read Part 2

Making cemetery arrangements can be daunting, and having to do so at a time of need can be downright distressing.

One of the causes of this anxiety is the vocabulary. Some of the words associated with cemeteries are rarely used in other contexts.

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