‘A specific kind of ministry’: Catholic Cemeteries director reflects on tenure

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

After five years as executive director of Mendota Heights-based The Catholic Cemeteries, Joan Gecik is retiring Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis.

The date is no coincidence, Gecik said, as she was a Sylvania Franciscan sister for 13 years before moving to full-time parish ministry as a layperson.

As a sister, she served in Ohio, Michigan and at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood. “I was at the school, in music ministry and on the justice committee — whatever else came up that I … stepped into,” she said.

Gecik’s work in parish ministry included serving at St. Richard in Richfield, the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, then-Holy Redeemer in Maplewood (before its 2007 merger with St. Peter in North St. Paul), Lumen Christi in St. Paul, and St. Thomas the Apostle in Minneapolis.

“I’ve always been a Franciscan at heart,” she said, and continued to live out Franciscan values, such as caring for creation, at the cemeteries.

During her time at the cemeteries — which include Calvary in St. Paul, Gethsemane in New Hope, Resurrection in Mendota Heights, and St. Anthony’s and St. Mary’s in Minneapolis — Gecik, 69, is most proud of work done related to the environment, calling it a big issue for the Church.

“I thought cemeteries need to be involved in this also,” she said. “We have that stewardship responsibility. I think it makes an impact not just on the cemetery, but on the world.”

Examples of environmental stewardship include Resurrection’s natural burial area, a prairie with no pesticide use or irrigation.

One challenge during Gecik’s tenure was providing services while keeping staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. “It was day-to-day decision-

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making on what we were going to do that particular day, week.”

Gecik’s successor is Carol Bishop, who has served the Church for more than 20 years, most recently as parish director of Pax Christi in Eden Prairie since December 2020. Her role there, which she left

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June 30, was “taking care of the business and the operations of the parish,” she said, with parish staff reporting to her.

Gecik described Bishop as well-rounded “in knowing administration, but also having such a good sense of people and pastoral care for people.”

“She has proven her leadership in the archdiocese,” Gecik said. “I think it was an excellent choice.”

Much of the executive director’s role is being strategic, Gecik said, keeping up with trends and looking at what cemeteries could become.

“We’ve continued some of the … high-impact programs such as fetal burial, but then we started the amnesty program,” which enabled people to bring cremated remains from their home to the cemetery for a minimal price, Gecik said. “Cremated remains are still the body and should be respected, have a permanent place and be memorialized, which is offered affordably in a special place in the chapel mausoleum.”

Gethsemane and Resurrection cemeteries started quarterly grief retreats using an indoor labyrinth as “kind of a walking prayer,” Gecik said. She hopes an outdoor labyrinth will be completed this summer at Resurrection.

Gecik said The Catholic Cemeteries also provide education via videos and webinars, and in May offered two watercolor classes “to show that the cemetery is also for the living.”

“It’s a place of beauty, a place to walk, to reflect, to pray, to enjoy,” she said. “And it helps us to pray.”

A cemetery is more than simply a place to bury people, Gecik said. “It is a call to a specific kind of ministry, and I think the staff … all understand that, and their actions reflect that call.”

Pastoral ministry occurs on a number of levels, from the field workers offering help to cemetery visitors to how people are treated when they call the office.

“That ability to listen beyond maybe the issue that is being brought up, that ability to go a step further than expected,” Gecik said.

Bishop previously worked at two parishes that had cemeteries: Holy Name of Jesus in Medina and St. John the Baptist in Excelsior. She has lost “a lot of people” who were important in her life, including her mother and younger sister. “So, I have a great deal of compassion for grief and loss,” she said, which is where she believes her “commitment to cemetery work” is rooted.

Cemeteries are thought of as places for the dead, but they’re also very much for the grieving, Bishop said. “It’s a place to go to honor your loss, to be, in some figurative sense anyway, with your loved one. It’s … a place to go where you really can honor that.”

“From a management perspective, obviously the operations and management of the cemetery and stewardship of resources is critical to the well-being of the cemetery itself,” she said.

Bishop said the cemeteries’ “stewardship element” is very important to her.

“We are caretaking, we’re taking care of the deceased, we’re taking care of the property, we’re taking care of the equipment and the buildings … There’s a great element of stewardship to it, and at the same time, it’s also ministry,” Bishop said. “I love that intersection.”

Bishop recalled days leaving her job at Holy Name, driving past the cemetery, and seeing those buried as people who built and supported the parish. “I saw them as a little community … and connected to us through the communion of saints,” she said.

One reason Gecik feels the time is right for retirement is that her mother, 94, lives in Ohio and she wants to see her more often. “And I think it’s the right time to have a new set of eyes and another person that can maybe take a look at things in a new light so that we’re always relevant,” she said.

SISTERS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 contributed to this appeal.”

She is especially proud of the way people have responded during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, which presented significant challenges to fundraising. With the opportunity to do in-person campaigning curtailed, Sister Lynore and others working on the appeal turned to producing videos as a way of reaching donors and potential donors.

It worked. Donations have held steady over the last few years, and this year’s total should be right around $500,000, she said. Along the way, the Catholic Community Foundation became a supporting partner in the effort, and parishes also participate by holding collections at designated weekend Masses. Sister Lynore calls it “a great privilege to help facilitate” the annual campaign. Money collected from each diocese and archdiocese goes to the national retirement fund office in Washington, D.C. Then, it is distributed in a grantbased system to individual communities based on need.

“The need is huge” overall, Sister Lynore said. “I don’t know exactly what that looks like throughout the United States, but I do know the communities that are really in need are really in need.”

As Sister Lynore and Sister Carolyn pursue new opportunities with their respective communities, they expressed gratitude for the chance to work side by side and collaborate with one another in their roles. For a time, Sister Carolyn was Sister Lynore’s supervisor, but it was a relationship of mutual respect.

“It’s been a great collaboration,” Sister Lynore said. “Both of us have said this — that it’s been a great blessing,” Sister Carolyn said, noting that she appreciates “the fact that we’ve been able to work together as well as we have and enjoy one another and appreciate the gifts and skills that each of us brings to this kind of ministry.”