https://youtu.be/AJ1NVEWPBrw
Here is a video I made at 2nd Calvary, Section 43, in which I recorded a walk-through of the new Garden of the Holy Family Columbarium. In summary I point out that cremation remains unpopular among Catholics, even as the church’s ban on the practice was lifted over 50 years ago. 50+ year might sound like a long time but when weighed against centuries of custom it barely represents even a start in changing attitudes. And it’s not as if Catholics everywhere were chomping at the bit waiting for the ban to be lifted. The new columbarium has capacity for nearly 3,000 individual urns. At present only 9 names are engraved on the niches, suggesting at a glance that sales here have been quite slow. It is likely, however, that many more niches have been sold on a pre-need basis, and that the business side of this endeavor is doing better than it might appear. The structure was built by Eickhof Columbaria, a firm which seems to be well-heeled in this space. I like the new structure a lot, though I had imagined that Calvary would go a little bigger in terms of capacity. It’s possible that the design is modular, so that if and when it ever reaches capacity maybe more niches could be stacked on top. I also like that it is outdoors, but it seems this erases the possibility of glass in place of the granite panels. See-through glass panels would encourage display of creative and artistic urns, as seen at other indoor columbaria. It is probably not on Calvary’s radar but I, for one, found some joy in surveying the creative things folks did with their urns at St. Michael’s Cemetery in particular.
