When 101 people were laid to rest at Mount Olivet Cemetery on Wednesday afternoon, no family or friends were there to mourn them. Yet they were certainly not alone.
As cold sunshine flooded the cemetery, around 20 Catholic high school students stood sentinel in their uniforms by the wooden caskets, holding yellow roses and bowing their heads. Dozens of others had arrived to place flowers on the graves and pray for the deceased, in a group that included county officials, mortuary science students and representatives of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
A section of Mount Olivet Cemetery in the South Side neighborhood of Morgan Park is reserved as the final resting place for the unidentified and indigent dead of Cook County. Since 2012, individuals whose remains are not retrieved for burial by a family member have been brought to Mount Olivet for group funeral services at the Catholic cemetery.
“These people were someone’s children, perhaps parents, siblings or friends,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle at the service. “They were part of our community. Though we may not know their individual stories, as members of this shared community, we step in as their family today.”
The cremated remains of 95 indigent people — those whose surviving families could not afford the cost of burial or otherwise failed to collect the body — were laid to rest Wednesday afternoon, along with six people whose identities remain unknown. The latter were not cremated in order to allow for potential future identification.
The Very Rev. Lawrence Sullivan, director of Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago, led a prayer service in honor of the deceased. Sullivan and Preckwinkle then sprinkled holy water on the wooden boxes containing each individual’s remains, blessing them.
“We gather here today knowing that we can participate in doing the work of the Lord by burying the remains of these 101 souls with a sense of great dignity, a sense of great respect and a sense of great compassion,” Sullivan said. “That is something that we have to be reminded of as we see people in our society who are in need. … We can see that as an opportunity for us to step up to the plate and to do what is right, to do what is just.”
Over 5,300 indigent, unknown and unborn have been buried at Mount Olivet since the archdiocese began its partnership with Cook County to provide such funerals in 2012. Wednesday’s service marked the 36th event of its kind.
Prior to 2012, Sullivan said, the indigent and unidentified dead of Cook County were typically buried without any formal service at different cemeteries throughout the city. When the county reached out to the archdiocese, they were looking for a way to make sure that these individuals were “buried with a sense of dignity and respect” instead of in a “perfunctory” manner, Sullivan said.
“Some people have had very difficult lives, they’ve seen a lot of sadness, they’ve seen a lot of suffering,” Sullivan said. “Their families don’t have the resources, or there’s no one left. And we want to make sure that those people are treated with the same kind of care, dignity and respect that every person who’s buried is.”
The official responsibility for organizing the final disposition of all remains of indigent and unidentified persons rests with Cook County and the medical examiner’s office. After an individual is found deceased, their family has 30 days to make funeral arrangements and retrieve the body, after which it will be cremated, Perrone said.
In Cook County, family members must pay a $250 fee to retrieve cremated remains, which can be waived if they can provide proof of their inability to cover the cost.
If a year passes without someone reaching out to collect the cremated remains, the county “steps in” to make arrangements for a burial at Mount Olivet, according to indigent and family services manager Rebeca Perrone.
Typically, these situations can occur when the deceased has no surviving family members or is otherwise estranged from relatives, Perrone said. Other times, even when a family member can be identified and contacted, they decline or are financially unable to pick up the remains for burial, Perrone added.
As attendees at the burial service on Wednesday passed by to pay their respects, small white tags could be seen on the sides of each wooden casket, marking the name of each individual buried in case family members ever decide that they want to recover the remains.
The county collaborates with not only the archdiocese but also the Cook County Funeral Directors Association, Worsham College of Mortuary Science and Malcolm X College to arrange the burials.
Students from Malcolm X College’s mortuary science program, who helped prepare the cremated remains for burial, attended Wednesday’s service wearing all black. Their assistance with the indigent and unknown burials would count for academic credit, said the program’s director Tionya Spriggs.
Alondra Gamon Canales, who is student president of Malcolm X’s mortuary science program, said that the experience had been “very educational,” as well as a chance to support individuals who had not been claimed by their family. As she carried each box of remains, she had tried to “imagine what their life was like.”
“I enjoyed really doing it with respect, putting them in their final resting place,” Gamon Canales said. “It really makes you think of the cycle of life, and how we should live life to our fullest, be thankful for what we have and tell people you love them.”
Two nearby Catholic schools — St. Laurence High School and Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School — also brought student volunteers to attend the service, a tradition that began in 2016 when St. Laurence’s chaplain Ed Sajdak had looked for a way to help students fulfill the “work of mercy” of burying the dead.
The event had inspired an overwhelmingly positive response from students and parents, Sajdak said, and so the partnership continued in future years. St. Laurence then began to invite other South Side Catholic high schools to attend, at times attracting as many as 50 student volunteers.
“The one thing that I instill upon them is the fact that you’ve all experienced probably some type of death in your family,” Sajdak said. “You went to the funeral, you were surrounded by family and friends, that really helped you, that supported you. The one thing you’ll notice here is a stark contrast. … So I say, today we have to be their guardian angels. So we’re going to walk that last walk with them.”
