Bringing Sisters Back Together: Loretto Begins Exhumation of Sisters Buried in Loretto Heights Cemetery
Posted on July 6, 2022, by Loretto Community
Photo by Ruth Routten CoL
Five years ago, with the announcement of the pending sale of the Loretto Heights campus, Loretto began prayerful and thoughtful research into how the Community could best ensure the perpetual care of the 62 Sisters of Loretto buried in the Loretto Heights Cemetery (LHC). Loretto is made up of a majority of Sisters now in their 80s and 90s. There will come a time when there won’t be any Sisters of Loretto in the Denver area to monitor the care of the Loretto Heights Cemetery. Consequently, in more than five years of consideration, the Loretto Community explored many different options in regard to Loretto Heights Cemetery. Among those considered were the following: LHC being owned by another cemetery and/or trying to find other resources that would care for LHC in perpetuity. Earlier this year Loretto’s Executive Committee made the difficult decision to move the bodies of the 62 Sisters buried at LHC to join the 22 Sisters of Loretto buried at Mt Olivet Catholic Cemetery. Mt. Olivet will soon house a total of 84 Sisters of Loretto all together as a witness to their faith and service. Bishop Joseph Machebeuf, the priest who asked for the Sisters of Loretto to come up from Santa Fe to teach the children of settlers coming to Denver after gold was discovered, is also buried at Mt. Olivet.
Photo by Ruth Routten CoL
The gravestones at LHC are being left behind and buried to remind us of that sacred ground and to honor what has been there for 110 years. The gravestones aren’t coming to Mt. Olivet as their material isn’t long lasting and would have to be replaced. The current owner of the LHC campus promises to make it into a one-third acre park memorializing the 62 Sisters previously buried there, the hundreds of Sisters who taught at Loretto Heights College and the lay professors and professionals who spent their entire careers educating young women.
The Loretto Heights Cemetery exhumation process began June 20, with Ruth Routten CoL, Mary Nelle Gage SL, Mt. Olivet staff and archaeologists from local universities and their students joining in prayer to honor the Loretto Heights College Class of ’62 and to ask God’s blessing on this endeavor.
Photo by Ruth Routten CoL
Photo by Ruth Routten CoL
Updated to include:
On August 22, 2022, the remains of the 62 Loretto Sisters were reinterred at Mount Olivet Cemetery. You can read more about it here.
Coverage of the exhumation process by local media:
Local carpenters lovingly hand-built Loretto Sisters’ new caskets
Nuns Graves Moved to Make Way for Loretto Heights Development | Westword
Remains of 62 nuns to be removed from Denver cemetery – 9News
Denver Cemetery to Exhume Remains of 62 Nuns Due to Redevelopment – Retro 102.5
Sacred ground: Bodies of 62 nuns being exhumed from Denver cemetery – 1310 KFKA
LORETTO HEIGHTS NUNS: More than 60 nuns reburied in Wheat Ridge | FOX31 Denver (kdvr.com)
62 nuns exhumed from Loretto Heights project (canoncitydailyrecord.com)
62 nuns find new resting place under Loretto Heights exhumation project – thedenverchannel.com
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It has been a privilege as a neighbor to Loretto Heights to watch the careful work of this group of professionals. The care and respect make the move of the Sisters easier for those of us in the community who initially felt robbed of “our” Sisters. Every time I’ve stopped to visit and see the progress, I’ve met yet another woman who attended LH, or has been inspired by the campus. We shall miss it … its magnificent lawn, its grand trees, its place in our hearts and our history. I cannot help but feel this opportunity to watch this historic transition in the 70th year of my life is a gift teaching us all that change, while sometimes unnerving, is right and just in moving our lives (and after lives) forward. Thanks be to God, our Father Almighty! Thanks be to our Blessed Mother’s steadfast example. Peace be to all who facilitated this move. Peace be to all of us on the sidelines. Life is good.
Thank you, Ms. Harrington, for sharing with us your beautiful comment.