She decided to start a “Campaign for the Precious Ones” in her diocese, offering Masses for couples who had miscarried or lost a child.
But the long-term goal was the Precious Ones Mausoleum.
“It is really an educational process,” Oliver told CNA in a phone call. “Before, we used to be much more aware that these babies should be buried, but we have to reeducate our Catholic community and the community at large.”
Miscarriages are often “not acknowledged in many ways,” Shilkunas said.
Parents often have to request the remains from the hospital, and in some hospitals, the remains are even treated as clinical waste and incinerated. Women often report a lack of social support, understanding, or even acknowledgement of their loss.
“It’s really time to be talking about these things,” Shilkunas said. “And it’s time for us to let people know that this should be the common conversation, that we really should be able to walk through [it with] mothers and fathers.”
Pohlmeier noted that the pain of the loss is “made worse” when hospitals “don’t treasure that gift [of life].”
“There are lots of people who take that [gift of life] very seriously and then suffer the loss of a child … that immediately touches their hearts and moves them in a way that only the awareness of this gift of life can do,” Pohlmeier told CNA.
“For the pain that people feel because we treasure the gift of life from its earliest moments, we ought to treat the situation with every dignity and respect,” the bishop said.
The diocese built relationships with local funeral homes and hospitals so that couples can hear about Precious Ones in their time of need. Each of the 12 empty crypts will be named for a saint so that they will be easy to identify for visiting family members. Hoffman told CNA that he hopes to add a reflection garden surrounding the mausoleum.
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Any couple, regardless of their faith background, can have their child buried in the mausoleum at no cost to them. Pohlmeier said that even those who aborted their child could bring remains to be buried.
He anticipated that as chemical abortions at home increase, there may be more “immediate regret,” with mothers having to deal more directly “with the remains.”
“That experience of [the] healing the power of God and the suffering of loss might come as a shock to some people after it’s too late,” Pohlmeier added. “But of course, that doesn’t change for us at all the care and respect that we would show to both mother and child in those situations.”
When asked what it was like to finally see the mausoleum at its dedication, Oliver said it was “beautiful.”
The dedication involved a Mass concelebrated by five priests and Pohlmeier, with the Knights of Columbus color guard attending in full regalia, wearing berets and carrying swords.
It was a “cloudless blue sky,” Oliver recalled, and Pohlmeier’s homily, which touched on how loving one’s neighbor extends “to those that have lost the life of a child,” stood out to her.
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