A Planning Guide To Bury or Inurn Cremated Remain

Cremation is Not the End …
… It is Preparation for Memorialization

Each year on Memorial Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Canada, thousands of individuals travel to local cemeteries and memorial parks to pay their respects to departed family members and friends. This once-a-year event, originally established to honor our war dead, signals the time for taking plants to gravesites, placing flowers in vases, and meditating in churches and chapels.

Visits to final resting places, however, are not limited to just this one day. Throughout
the year people remember those who are no longer with them by going to the areas where special memorials have been established.

Remembering those who have died is not a modern-day phenomenon. Thousands of years
ago when the funeral pyre and the "sacred flame" were used, survivors fashioned beautiful urns to hold the cherished remains from what they termed the "purifying fire."

Today, cremation has advanced from the crude funeral pyre to modern scientific methods. It
is only in the handling of those "cherished remains" that we link up with the past.

We recognize as did those long-ago individuals the importance of memorialization.

Cremation Committal Services when arranged by families
Catholic Cemeteries encourages cremation burial to follow the same process as a funeral with a casket. Use of a funeral director’s services, funeral mass at the parish, and a blessing at the grave-side, crypt or cremation niche is recommended and encouraged.

However, cremation affords families the occasion to handle burial arrangements without the assistance of a funeral director. For these arrangements, the following procedures and guidelines are recommended for your review.

Before purchasing a cremation urn, families should review the cemetery’s rules and regulations regarding the appropriateness of the container and the maximum permitted urn size for the intended burial space.

Glass front cremation niches have additional regulations concerning the overall characteristics of urn type, composition, inscription, epitaphs, and related concerns
over the urn to be displayed.

Urns must be smaller than the vault to fit. For best fit in our cemetery urn vault
(13 x 8 x 10) an urn should not exceed 12 ½ ” x 7 ½ ” x 9 ½”.
Please review the printed rules for restrictions in cremation niches.

Families should appoint one member as a spokesperson to set up a 20 to 30 minute telephone call to the cemetery office (generally one week before the intended burial date).

Cremated remains shouldnever be mailed to the cemetery office.

Families completing arrangements without a funeral director are REQUIRED TO PRESENT IN PERSON OR FAX all documents to the cemetery office 48 hours before the committal service.

Your committal service will not be scheduled unless this step is completed.

On the date of the committal service family members may wish to review and prepare for the following items:

Additional concerns:
Late fees apply at the time of arrival at the cemetery office. Families should be prepared to pay in full these charges.

Incidental fees (for example an opening affidavit fee when the original certificate is not presented) must also be paid in full at the cemetery office before the committal service.

Cancellation fees apply for canceling a scheduled committal service.