Bishop blesses new columbarium at St. Mary of the Hills Parish

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

Bishop McManus blessed a new columbarium at St. Mary of the Hills Parish in West Boylston, at an outdoor Mass on June 21.

The granite wall with 40 niches for cremated remains is across the driveway from the church, where the St. Therese of Lisieux shrine had been. The space, which includes the St. Therese statue created for the parish years ago, is now called St. Therese Memorial Garden.

“Because we have this devotion to St. Therese” in the parish, “we wanted to protect that,” keeping the statue with her relic and continuing the annual triduum around her Oct. 1 feast day, said Robert “Bob” Mecca, chairman of the St. Therese Memorial Garden Committee.

At the Mass Father Juan D. Echavarria, pastor, thanked the bishop for blessing the columbarium, expressed hope that soon there will be two more walls with 40 niches each and said many will rest there in hope of eternal life. He thanked everyone for their support.

“You can hear the birds, you can see the sights of nature,” raved committee member Atty. Janet Lombardi. “It hits all of your senses. ... That’s what we’re trying to convey ... There’s no other place like this in the community. It’s a really, really lovely place.”

Mr. Mecca said the idea came to him about 10 years ago after he prayed at the columbarium at Holy Trinity Church in West Harwich, where a friend’s wife’s cremains are.

He said Bishop McManus and cemetery directors supported the possibility of erecting a columbarium at St. Mary of the Hills, and the bishop asked that neighboring parishes – Our Lady of Good Counsel in West Boylston and St. Anne and St. Mary in Shrewsbury – be invited to have their deceased interred there too.

Father Echavarria said St. Mary of the Hills has a younger congregation; at most, there are 12-15 funerals there per year, but 40-50 baptisms. But the parish does not have its own cemetery.

Representatives at the other parishes said St. Mary’s in Shrewsbury and Our Lady of Good Counsel do not have cemeteries, and St. Anne’s Cemetery, on the church’s lawn, is basically full.

Mr. Mecca said he and Robert “Bob” Abair, at the time a committee member, who has a manufacturing and project management background, got permission from pastors of those parishes to promote the project to their parishes. The two men supplied bulletin information, spoke at Masses and gave a presentation at each parish.

Father Echavarria said that when he arrived at St. Mary of the Hills in 2018 Patrick Healy, a parishioner who is a civil engineer, had made drawings for the project, which was put on hold because of unexpected costs for other work. The COVID-19 pandemic also halted progress.

“Almost two years ago the idea [of having a columbarium] came back,” Father Echavarria said. “I created a formal committee.”

Members, all parishioners who donated their time and talent, are: Mr. Mecca, chairman; Mr. Healy, the architect; Atty. Lombardi, who handled the legal work; Michael Furgal, an arborist; and Finance Committee members Raymond Lambert and David Walling.

Father Echavarria said he and Mr. Mecca took the idea back to Bishop McManus, who “gave us the go-ahead.”

Atty. Lombardi said the parish has to follow diocesan laws and Massachusetts laws for cemeteries, and she wrote the contract, which Mr. Mecca said is between the parish and niche buyers.

“The actual construction started in the fall last year,” with clearing and preparing the land, Father Echavarria said. Mr. Mecca said the ground work was completed this spring.

Rock of Ages, a company in Barre, Vermont, made the granite wall with 40 niches, which can each hold two urns of cremated remains, delivered it in April and set it on the foundation in May, Mr. Mecca said.

He said Monday that the parish has pre-sold 26 niches for $5,000 each, and the price could increase for future walls if costs rise.

Other costs to families are: buying urns, paying funeral directors to open and close the niches, and paying for the engraving of the faceplates, which the parish plans to have labeled in a consistent font by Worcester County Memorials in Shrewsbury.

Mr. Mecca said niche buyers get a perpetual guarantee that the parish will maintain the property and Rock of Ages will fix any damage to the columbarium at no charge to them.
Atty. Lombardi expressed appreciation for this site: “It’s spiritual; it’s next to a church. It’s smaller. It’s accessible.” People do not have to drive to a big cemetery to visit loved ones’ graves.

Mr. Walling said having the columbarium here enables families to have a funeral in the church, then walk across the driveway for the committal. If they want, they can use the church hall for a gathering afterwards.

They can come anytime, Mr. Furgal noted, and Mr. Mecca said people can pray and light a candle by the St. Therese statue even if not visiting the columbarium itself.

“We intend to create a flyer to promote this columbarium” to more area parishes and funeral homes, Mr. Mecca said. “Right now, without any publicity, I’m averaging about one contact per week” from interested people.

If expanded, the columbarium might provide some income for the parish, but that’s not the main goal, Father Echavarria said. Having it by the church is a way of honoring the dead and providing support for the living.