Hidden Graves Reveal Cemetery Neglect

Ed Zack spotted a slight indent in the grass. He kicked away a layer of soil and weeds to find the gravestone of a veteran in St. Bernard’s Cemetery in the Hill. 

He found another indent. And another. And another. 

Eventually he uncovered several rows of hidden graves — along with a mystery about what happened to the funding designated for their upkeep.

Zack, who works by day as the City of New Haven’s chief internal auditor, has embarked on a mission to hold local grave stewards accountable for dilapidated conditions after observing neglect in the cemetery where his parents are buried.

“My father is a veteran,” Zack said. ​“It’s upsetting to see a veteran’s marker covered with weeds.”

Zack has found a partner in retired state Superior Court Judge Carmen Lopez, who has family members of her own buried in neglected graveyards. 

The auditor-lawyer duo has identified several cemeteries, all controlled by affiliates of the Catholic Church, that have deteriorated — despite agreements with families and a mandate by state law to spend the proceeds from designated ​“perpetual care trusts” on cemetery upkeep.

The church and its affiliates have refused to provide information about how those trusts have been spent. Officials connected to the church and affiliates did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Efforts within the state legislature to uncover more information have drawn out, yielding no progress so far.

“Connecticut has provided no oversight for cemeteries,” said Lopez. ​“There’s been, in my view, an effort to not provide oversight.”

One of the cemeteries in question is St. Bernard’s in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood, where Zack found rows of graves subsumed by weeds and soil on Monday afternoon.

There, Angela Sorbo Piscitelli visits the grave of her father, who died in World War II when she was an infant. 

“Every time we went, we always brought gardening tools,” she said. ​“We always have to clean the marker.”

On a recent Memorial Day, she and her son Mike (who happens to be the city’s economic development administrator) went to St. Bernard’s to try and clean the gravestones of other veterans who ostensibly have no living family to attend to their burial places. 

“I never realized how many were actually there,” Sorbo Pisticelli said. Even with Mike’s weed whacker, the pair could only clear away a few stones that afternoon. ​“We had tried,” she said, ​“but the soil is so impacted that you really need better tools than we had that day.”

As the surviving loved ones of the people buried try to clear the graves themselves, the church has continued to resist revealing how it’s spent the perpetual care trusts intended to fund that very kind of maintenance.

Where Did Those Deposits Go?

Connecticut statutes (particularly sec. 19a-301) allow cemetery associations to establish ​“perpetual care funds,” investments generating income that must be spent on the ​“care and maintenance” of the cemeteries in their charge.

These trusts are typically funded by people purchasing graves for themselves and their families. The Archdiocese of Hartford’s Parish Administration and Finance Manual specifies that ​“approximately fifty percent of the amount received from the sale of each cemetery plot” should be deposited into a perpetual care trust. The grave certificates issued to both Lopez and Zack’s families promise that a portion of the sale money will go toward grave maintenance.

State statute requires cemetery associations to report how the income from these deposits has been spent annually to probate court. 

But when Lopez inquired about conditions at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Trumbull, she received a letter in December from the Diocese of Bridgeport Chief Financial Officer Michael Hanlon arguing that Catholic cemeteries are exempt from this requirement.

“As a religious organization maintaining our diocesan and parish cemeteries in furtherance of the mission of the church, the statute you cite does not apply to us, and as such, we are not required to file annual reports with the Probate court,” Hanlon wrote.

Lopez is challenging this stance in Trumbull’s probate court, arguing that the perpetual care fund regulations have a secular purpose and don’t inhibit any religious expression. She said that the judge originally responsible for the case recused himself due to his Catholic identity, and that she is still waiting for a new court date after her latest filing in February.

Asked by the Independent for comment, a representative of the Archdiocese of Hartford said that questions about cemetery upkeep and perpetual care should be posed to Catholic Cemeteries Association, the ​“separate but related organization” that owns St. Bernard’s Cemetery. 

Catholic Cemeteries Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lopez and Zack said they plan to take the conditions at St. Bernard’s to New Haven’s probate court soon.

Meanwhile, advocates have been pushing for more state regulation over cemetery care, particularly with regard to veterans’ graves.

In 2023, State Sen. Christine Cohen of Guilford proposed a bill that would create a system for complaints about the neglected graves of veterans to be heard by the Department of Consumer Protection and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill did not make it out of committee. Instead, the legislature passed a bill creating a ​“working group” to ultimately make a recommendation for how the upkeep of veterans’ graves should be enforced.

As these attempts at state regulation churn along, the weeds at St. Bernard’s have continued to grow. The grave stones no longer visited — and not yet discovered by a dogged auditor — have largely been subsumed by the soil.