SECHELT, B.C. (CCN) — The Sunshine Coast Regional District, located on British Columbia’s southern mainland coast across from Vancouver Island, covers nearly 4,000 square km — a vast area that has not had a dedicated Catholic cemetery space until now.
A new columbarium at Holy Family Parish in the city of Sechelt offers the roughly 400 Catholic households in the two well-established parishes of the southern Sunshine Coast — Holy Family and St. Mary’s in Gibsons — a final resting place on Church grounds rather than in a public cemetery.
“There’s nothing,” said Father Vincent Cuong Nguyen, pastor of Holy Family, referring to the lack of a Catholic cemetery on the coast.
Catholics buried in municipal cemeteries can have the graves of their loved ones blessed by a priest, but Nguyen wanted the parish to provide Catholic burial grounds.
The columbarium beside the church was blessed by Archbishop Richard Smith Aug. 30, and the first cremated remains were interred that day, capping five years of planning, fundraising, approvals and construction.
For Nguyen, the columbarium — a curved outdoor wall with niches in which the urns containing remains can be permanently sealed — fills a need for Catholics on the Sunshine Coast.
The Catholic Church continues to prefer burial of the body and encourages Catholics to have the body of the deceased present for the funeral Mass. Cremation is nevertheless permitted, and Nguyen said interest in the new columbarium was strong enough that he expanded the original plan.
“The first plan was something — just one unit, one big tower — and I said, ‘No, we have to do it big.’”
The present installation is the first phase. Plans allow for two additional units to complete the circle beside the church. There are no plans to accommodate in-ground burials.
Nguyen said the idea originated about five years ago, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the project to a halt. What followed were years of planning and obtaining the necessary permissions.
“My goodness, that’s a long process,” he said.
The parish received its licence from Consumer Protection BC only days before the blessing.
Nguyen said the parish relied heavily on Peter Nobes of Catholic Cemeteries and Funeral Services to guide it through the process.
“A lot of people think it’s very straightforward,” said Nobes. “But the process we had to go through to get a licence on this was quite cumbersome. You have a lot of regulations and record-keeping requirements, so it’s not straightforward.”
Among the requirements were establishing a trust account, writing a bylaw, and developing rules governing pricing and memorialization.
A parish columbarium also represents a permanent obligation.
“You can never cancel once you open a cemetery, albeit a columbarium,” Nobes said. “It can never be taken off the property. It’s meant to be permanent.”
That permanence is one reason the Archdiocese of Vancouver has been cautious about establishing columbaria on parish property. Nobes said a 2009 archdiocesan letter discouraged parishes from pursuing them because once established, a burial place permanently encumbers the property and brings continuing regulatory and record-keeping obligations.
At the same time, the new facility gives Catholics something the Sunshine Coast has not previously had, a blessed and sacred burial space owned by the Church.
Although the Church prefers traditional burial, “it’s great to have this locally if you were intending on cremation,” he said.
“This is a beautiful spot,” he said. “It’s right on parish grounds. You can visit it after Mass.”
