A Large Undertaking

The Roman Catholic Church is planning $10 million in improvements at its three Orange County cemeteries to fend off competition from big, private graveyards and meet increasing parishioners’ demands.

Backed by Tod Brown, who took over as bishop of the Diocese of Orange just over a year ago, cemetery director Mike Shaffer hopes to make the diocese’s three cemeteries an extension of parish ministries with expanded bereavement care and burial options.

“Catholics in this diocese haven’t been offered services they’ve been asking for, like mausoleum space,” he said. “Those were sold out years and years ago.”

The three Catholic cemeteries--Good Shepherd Cemetery at Talbert Avenue and Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery on Santiago Canyon Road in Orange and Ascension Cemetery on Trabuco Road in Lake Forest--haven’t been improved in more than 23 years.

The cemeteries are in an enviable position in that they have the land to expand. However, resources haven’t been put into preparing grave sites or building the mausoleums. As a result, said Jesus Avina, director of the Good Shepherd Cemetery, the cemeteries have been turning away people who want to buy large family plots.

Good Shepherd Cemetery has 21,896 graves on 25 developed acres, along with 20 undeveloped acres. It’s difficult for Good Shepherd to compete with Forest Lawn Memorial Park-Glendale, for example, which has 300,000 plots on 300 acres.

“People really want the whole family to be buried together,” Avina said. “And we’re almost out of room.”

Churchgoers have been taking their interment business elsewhere, looking for discounts on multiple plots and fancy, large mausoleum spaces, something the Catholic cemeteries don’t have right now.

But the Diocese of Orange is looking to change that right away.

The most ambitious plans are for the 70-acre Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, which will get a mission-style mausoleum and an outdoor altar at the base of a new statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, said Dave Hepburn of the McCleskey Memorial Associates of Huntington Beach, which is handling the renovations.

Plans call for the remains of more than 30 diocesan priests to be moved to a crypt inside the new mausoleum at Holy Sepulcher, and for semiprivate enclosed gardens for the most expensive family plots.

At Good Shepherd, expanded parking for the neighboring St. Vincent de Paul Church will be provided this year.

Good Shepherd started in 1900 as a nondenominational cemetery and was later taken over by the diocese. Holy Sepulcher Cemetery dates to 1931, and Ascension Cemetery is 30 years old.

Church officials say the cemeteries aren’t losing money, but neither are they making as much as they could to help the diocese with other programs.

Revenue has risen gradually from $2.5 million in 1994 to $2.9 million last year, but profits aren’t keeping pace with inflation or the industry.

“We haven’t done anything to participate in the growth,” said Phil Ries, director of finance for the diocese, “particularly given the phenomenal growth of Orange County.”

The problem, church officials said, is that many who would otherwise choose a Roman Catholic burial go to private cemeteries like Forest Lawn that market aggressively.

“We’re running out of grave space,” Shaffer said. “We’re losing lots of Catholic families to these big cemeteries because we don’t offer what they’re offering.”

According to a two-year survey conducted by the McCleskey office, only 50% of parishioners have been using the Catholic cemeteries.

Though its resources are limited, the diocese does hold one advantage over its competitors: Catholic cemeteries offer consecrated ground, an option that often puts the minds of the bereaved--and their loved ones--truly at rest.

“In any religious cemetery, burying the dead is one of the corporeal acts of mercy,” said Bob Fells, general counsel for the International Cemetery and Funeral Assn., based in Reston, Va. “It’s not a business transaction.”

He said that attitude has caused Catholic cemetery sales to lag behind the private sector, which has been aggressive lately in contacting families and persuading them--even the very religious--to buy lots.

A Catholic cemetery was the only option for Lanthi Pham, 38, of Westminster, who knelt with scissors by her husband’s grave at Good Shepherd to carve a cross in the blades of grass.

“I come here every day to see my husband,” she said, pointing to the simple headstone with the black-and-white photo of the two of them, arm-in-arm, smiling broadly for the camera. “He’s in good hands now.”

Her husband died more than two years ago of pancreatic cancer.

He liked the simple gravestones and flowers at Good Shepherd, wanted to be buried in a Catholic cemetery and to have an “eternal apartment” for his 2-year-old son to visit, Pham said.

“I tell people that my husband got hired by God full time,” Pham said. “So, he must have done a good job here on Earth.”

Diocese officials are banking on that kind of loyalty and their ability to expand on undeveloped land at each cemetery as reasons to make the $10 million in renovations. Shaffer predicted that the project will turn a profit again for the diocese within 10 years, money that officials will put back into the diocese budget.

Although Ries said cemetery revenue has never been a “significant contributor” to the annual budget--most money comes from school tuition and parishioner contributions--providing better burial options will eventually turn a profit.

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Building Projects

The Diocese of Orange is planning $10 million in improvements at the Catholic Church’s three Orange County cemeteries. Work includes development of grave sites and construction of mausoleums and niches for cremation remains.