In Louisville, Catholic high schoolers help bury the indigent dead

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2024 / 10:05 am

An indigent burial program run by Catholic Charities in Louisville, Kentucky, regularly receives help from an unlikely source — local high schoolers.

Catholic Charities of Louisville says its “one-of-a-kind” burial program “provides burial services for individuals in our community who do not have resources or family to provide them.”

“Every individual that qualifies for the Indigent Burial Program receives a dignified and respectful service surrounded by compassionate volunteers and community members,” the charity says.

Jennifer Wilson, the burial program’s coordinator, told CNA that the initiative was originally started by the city in order to address individuals whose remains were left in city morgues with no family or loved ones to claim them.

“It’s just not a very good thing,” she said. “It doesn’t show respect and dignity for human beings.”

The program is funded by the city and administered by Catholic Charities, Wilson said.

“We give them a service,” she said. “We put them to rest with dignity and respect and love, no matter what they’ve done and where they come from.” The burials are conducted out of Meadow View Cemetery, south of the city near the Ohio River.

Catholic Charities will sometimes help with expenses, she said. The charity also supplies headstones to the graves, while volunteers make palls, which a priest then blesses.

“This is just to say, ‘We’re here for you. You’re not alone. We’re going to lay you to rest with dignity.’ That’s a special thing,” she said.

Also special are the volunteers who regularly help with the burials — local high schoolers drawn from surrounding Catholic schools.

The St. Joseph of Arimathea Society, founded in 2006, works with students to coordinate tasks such as headstone placement. Students regularly attend the burials themselves as well.

The society is named after St. Joseph of Arimathea, the Sanhedrin follower of Jesus who gave his own intended burial tomb for Christ’s body. 

Art Potter, a Louisville resident who has volunteered with the group for years, told CNA that there are weekly Christian burial services given for “homeless [people] found on the street, persons murdered, [victims of] drug overdoses, and those simply abandoned by families.” 

“We infrequently have attendees of 20-25 persons,” Potter said, “however most of the time there is no one attending but volunteers.”

The volunteers are drawn from Catholic high schools, he said, “teaching respect and dignity to the deceased, whatever the cause of death.”

The Catholic newspaper The Record reported in September about a group of students working to lay several dozen headstones at the cemetery. Students from rival Catholic schools came together to do the work in 90-degree heat. 

High school junior Murphy Lee Schmidt told the paper that while the students were “not fully burying [the dead],” they were “doing our part.” 

“Just cleaning off their graves and making it a reverent area, just keeping their name alive is really important,” he said.

Beth Yeager, the new program director for community support services at Louisville Catholic Charities, said the program has received bequests recently allowing them to hire an assistant to help with administrative tasks. The Catholic charity works with the coroner’s office as well as with a local hospice as part of the ministry.

“It’s more than just burying people,” Yeager said. “It’s spending time figuring out how to do it the right away.”

Wilson said the point of the program is to afford poor and abandoned people the same dignity and love that others receive when they are buried. 

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“We try to make it as ‘normal’ as possible,” she said. “We want to take care of people.”