Bishop consecrates new cemetery

Opening of Holy Cross gives Diocese of Knoxville third sacred site

By Dan McWilliams

The diocese’s new Holy Cross Cemetery went from a construction site to holy ground on Dec. 20 as Bishop Mark Beckman consecrated the 10.9-acre site on Northshore Drive near the Knox-Loudon county line.

The property, formerly the site of a tree nursery, was donated in fall 2024 by diocesan benefactors Alan and Sally Sefton and is now the third cemetery for the Church in East Tennessee. The cemetery in the Farragut-Concord-Lenoir City area has a potential capacity of 3,500 graves in its four burial gardens. The Seftons additionally contributed $1 million to establish a perpetual-care fund for the land.

Mr. and Mrs. Sefton attended the consecration—which began with a ribbon-cutting—along with diocesan chancellor and cemetery superintendent Deacon Sean Smith, priests, a number of the faithful, others who helped with the cemetery project, and men and women religious.

“It is such a blessed and beautiful day to be able to bless this new cemetery and to consecrate it for the people of God who will someday have their bodies buried here. It is such a beautiful place,” Bishop Beckman said. “When I first saw this location—it is hard for me to imagine what places will look like in the future—but it is truly a perfect, beautiful location for a cemetery. It is not a long journey from our cathedral, which I am delighted about. It only took about 22 minutes to get here. Also, it’s not far from the interstate, so people can come from all over.”

Bishop Beckman noted that the other Catholic cemetery in the Knoxville area, Calvary Cemetery in East Knoxville, which is more than 150 years old, is nearly at capacity.

“It’s good that we have a brand-new cemetery, which will have many, many, many burials for decades to come,” he said.

The bishop also said that interest in Holy Cross by parishioners has been high since the cemetery was announced last year.

“A large number of people have already requested to reserve places in the cemetery,” he said. “We are so grateful to the Seftons for this gift.”

Deacon Smith and Deacon Hicks Armor assisted the bishop at the consecration. Bishop Beckman recognized Deacon Smith at the event for his efforts of more than a year to have the cemetery land properly zoned, its loop road paved, and its previously cleared-off dirt surface covered with topsoil.

“It’s one of the most wonderful days for me, to see it all come to fruition,” Deacon Smith said after the consecration. “For much of the last year and a half, I’ve had to deal with business-type aspects of getting laws changed and rezoning and approvals, and then it became a construction project with major excavation and all that. Today, this construction site became consecrated ground, holy ground. In true measure to the holy cross, just feeling God’s presence here, it’s one of the happiest days that I’ve had in a long time.”

What the Catholic faith is really all about

The bishop blessed a large cross that stands behind a new marble altar with tiles at the cemetery. The altar was installed on what was formerly the nursery’s loading dock.

“In the rite of Christian burial, when we come out here to celebrate that rite, there is a phrase that I particularly remember. It speaks about the grave being a sign of hope that promises resurrection even as it claims our mortal bodies,” Bishop Beckman said in a brief homily at the consecration.

“And in a nutshell, that is what the Catholic faith is really all about. There’s a beautiful reverencing for the body that God created, and that’s why we honor it so in Christian burial. The hope is that we will one day share in the glory of the Lord forever, and as it were, have our resurrected or glorified bodies, or as St. Paul called them ‘spiritual bodies.’ This beautiful cemetery that we bless today will be a place that many will come in the future to honor in Christian burial their loved ones.”

Before the ribbon-cutting, Deacon Smith addressed the gathering and thanked the Seftons as well as Paul and Rebecca LaPointe of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Lenoir City, who donated the cemetery altar.

Having an altar at the cemetery allows for “a beautiful place to celebrate on All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day and maybe even where you see these trees where we haven’t developed, where the grass stops, we plan to have Stations of the Cross. Maybe on Good Friday or a nice Friday in Lent, Bishop could lead us in the Stations of the Cross here,” Deacon Smith said.

The deacon also thanked Adam Waller, a Loudon County commissioner, who has two children who attend St. John Neumann School in Farragut, as well as Mr. Waller’s father, Mike Waller, a member of the Loudon County Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals.

“Adam was critical to me because this would have never happened unless we got Loudon County to change a law because the law says you can’t have a cemetery unless it’s 20 acres. Well, guess what? This is 10 acres,” Deacon Smith said.

“Adam is a District 6 county commissioner. He and his daddy helped me all the way through getting the law changed, and then once we got the law changed, we had to get it rezoned because it was for agriculture. Then after all that, we had to get the county commission to bless it and approve. Adam, I’m grateful for all you and your daddy did to help us go through all that county stuff. It took months and months,” he added.

Stu McFadden, a parishioner of St. Thomas the Apostle, made the large wooden cross for the cemetery.

“He’s a woodworker. He’s working on the tabernacle table for St. Thomas. He’s just a phenomenal man, so thank you,” Deacon Smith said.

The chancellor also thanked priests attending the consecration, including diocesan vicar general Father Peter Iorio, also pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Alcoa. Father Iorio was present at the event along with Father Julian Cardona, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle; Father Mark Schuster, pastor of St. John Neumann in Farragut; Father Hoan Dinh, associate pastor of St. Patrick in Morristown; Monsignor Patrick Garrity, pastor emeritus of St. John Neumann; and Father Elijah John Joseph of the Benedictines of Divine Will in Blount County.

Benedictine Brothers and Benedictine Daughters of Divine Will attended the consecration along with the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary, based at St. John Neumann, and the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich.

Deacon Smith thanked Father Cardona on behalf of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish.

“In four to six weeks on that holy cross, you’ll see a 4-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide, 10-inch-depth corpus that will be mounted on it. The great parish of St. Thomas helped fund that,” Deacon Smith said.

He also thanked “our bishop for his unwavering support” for the cemetery “from the very beginning” of his ministry in East Tennessee.

Bishop Beckman saluted Deacon Smith “for his countless hours” in making “this dream become a reality.”

‘Nampenda Maria’

Before the ribbon-cutting, the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary sang a Marian song, “Nampenda Maria,” in Swahili. The Sisters also sang that song at the burial of Father Joseph Hammond, CHS, in the priests’ corner at Holy Cross Cemetery. Father Hammond, a priest of the Crusaders of the Holy Spirit community, is the only person buried at the cemetery to date. He served in the Diocese of Knoxville from 1998 until his death last Aug. 9. He was laid to rest on Aug. 16 at Holy Cross following a funeral Mass at St. John Neumann Church celebrated by Bishop Beckman and concelebrated by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz.

“We have a very faithful, holy soul who’s praying for us today,” Deacon Smith said before the Marian song. “You’ll see his brand-new tombstone, and that’s Father Joseph Hammond, who was from Ghana. The Sisters sang that Blessed Mother song at his burial. To honor him and to continue to ask for his prayers, I ask the Sisters to come forward.”

The bishop and the Seftons cut the ribbon at the cemetery, and the group then processed to the altar as the Sisters of Mercy sang Psalm 118, with the antiphon from verse 20: “This is the gate of the Lord; here the just shall enter.”

After giving an opening blessing, Bishop Beckman began the rite of consecration.

“Brothers and sisters in Christ, a common Christian concern has brought us together to bless this cemetery, where our bodies and the bodies of others sealed with the name of Christ will lie at rest, awaiting the dawn of the Lord’s coming in glory,” he said. “After preparing this resting place for the dead, we should look to Christ, who suffered and rose again for our salvation. He has commanded that we keep watch for His coming and has promised to meet us when we rise again.”

The bishop then led a prayer.

“Lord, you made your people a pilgrim Church to be welcomed by you into its eternal home,” he said. “Bless us as we go in procession to this cemetery. May this place, prepared in the sure hope of the resurrection, never cease to remind us of the life that we are to share in Christ, who will transform our earthly bodies to be like His in glory, for He is Lord forever and ever. Amen.”

Deacon Smith proclaimed a reading from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17: “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus, we shall always be with the Lord.”

After the reading, Deacon Smith placed canonical documents on the altar. The bishop and Deacon Smith signed a decree establishing Holy Cross Cemetery as a “public juridic person,” a term from canon law, meaning the cemetery can operate in the name of the Church. The two also signed a cemetery statutes document, which may be viewed by those reserving a plot at the cemetery on its website (see below). Bishop Beckman and Father Iorio signed a document appointing Deacon Smith as superintendent of the cemetery.

The bishop then blessed and incensed the cemetery cross and blessed those attending.

“God of all consolation, by your just decree our bodies return to the dust from which they were shaped, yet in your way of mercy you have turned this condition of darkness and death into a proof of your loving care,” Bishop Beckman prayed. “In your providence, you assured Abraham, our father in faith, of a burial place in the land of promise. You extolled your servant Tobit for his charity in burying the dead. You willed that your own Son be laid to rest in a new tomb, so that He might rise from it, the victor over death, and offer us the pledge of our own resurrection.

“Grant that this cemetery, placed under the sign of the cross, may, by the power of your blessing, be a place of rest and hope. May the bodies buried here sleep in your peace, to rise immortal at the coming of your Son. May this place be a comfort to the living, a sign of their hope for unending life. May prayers be offered here continually in supplication for those who sleep in Christ and in constant praise of your mercy. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

The bishop then blessed the cemetery with holy water as Deacon Smith drove him throughout the property over its now-paved looped road in a John Deere Gator utility vehicle. The faithful sang Psalm 51 as the bishop and deacon made their way through the cemetery. Deacon Smith led intercessory prayers afterward.

Bishop Beckman said the cemetery altar will be consecrated soon.

Four burial gardens

The cemetery has four burial gardens: a large Exaltation of the Holy Cross garden, a Holy Rood garden, a Santa Cruz (Spanish for “holy cross”) garden for the Hispanic community, and a Good Shepherd garden—a name chosen by Bishop Beckman—for priests.

The Santa Cruz Burial Garden is “in recognition of our large Hispanic communities,” Deacon Smith said. Priests will be buried at no cost in the Good Shepherd Burial Garden.

Holy Cross Cemetery is in a rural area at 14301 Northshore Drive just across the Knox County line in Loudon County, and it has a Lenoir City address. The property is centrally located between St. John Neumann and St. Thomas the Apostle parishes. The new cemetery includes a large one-story building from the nursery.

The diocese searched for some years for a new Catholic burial site as Calvary Cemetery close to downtown Knoxville, maintained by Immaculate Conception Parish, has been close to capacity for several years. The six-acre Calvary property on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue was acquired by IC, whose church is about two miles away, in 1869. Calvary is landlocked in a residential area.

The diocese’s other cemetery, Mount Olivet in Chattanooga, was founded in 1886 and is maintained by the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul and other Chattanooga Deanery parishes. Mount Olivet covers about 30 acres with another 20 for potential expansion and has columbaria, which Calvary does not. Holy Cross Cemetery will not have columbaria but will allow for the burial of cremated remains. All three diocesan cemeteries have sections for priest burials.

Others who helped bring Holy Cross Cemetery to reality include Dennis and Kim Bridges of Bridges Funeral Home in Knoxville, who are assisting the diocese in designing the cemetery, and many parishioners of St. Thomas who “worked tirelessly” on the paving and landscaping, Deacon Smith said.

Mr. and Mrs. Sefton are parishioners of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Mr. Sefton called the cemetery consecration “wonderful.”

“In the diocese, we’ve been looking for a cemetery for a long time. As I understand it, the one in (East) Knoxville is nearly full,” he said. “This is fairly central to four parishes, really, and I think there’s a great need for it. I know when they were looking to do this, they took a vote in parishes, like a census, on whether people wanted to be cremated or buried. I think it turned out that 51 percent wanted to be cremated and 49 percent wanted to be buried. . . . I think it’s going to serve the local parishes very well here, and it’s a beautiful spot.”

Mr. Sefton said that Deacon Smith’s efforts “have been amazing. He’s actually turned this from an out-of-business nursery into four beautiful burial gardens.”

The Seftons “are planning to be buried here,” Mr. Sefton noted.

Holy Cross Cemetery has a provision made by the Seftons “for the burial of non-Catholics, but they have to be baptized Christians,” Mr. Sefton said.

The Seftons were the largest donors toward the construction of the new cathedral and later donated its organ. The couple also sponsors the Cathedral Concert Series, which will have its 100th performance soon.

The loading dock from the former nursery at Holy Cross Cemetery “was dilapidated cinder block” when the property was donated, Deacon Smith pointed out.

“My wife and I made a trip to Italy a couple of months back,” he said. “At the Colosseum, they built this new altar, and that’s where the Holy Father does the Way of the Cross and has a Mass there, and I thought, ‘My goodness, wouldn’t that be nice to have at our cemetery for All Souls’ Day and various things?’

“Essentially, I said, ‘Where in the world could I do it?’ I said, ‘Well, the biggest eyesore is that loading dock. What if I could get stacked stone and make it beautiful and then order the tiles and stuff from Italy and build an altar on that loading dock because you can’t really get rid of it? I went to a donor, Paul and Rebecca LaPointe. I wanted to surprise the bishop and the Seftons with the altar. I said, ‘I need some help financially because the marble and the tiles come from Italy, I’ve ordered it, and would you help, and they did.”

A candidate for the permanent diaconate, Rigoberto Ricardo Gonzalez of Pigeon Forge, then stepped in. “I hired a contractor . . . he and his team built it for me,” Deacon Smith said.

Before Father Hammond’s burial, the greenhouses, gravel, and many pots for plants from the cemetery site’s time as a nursery all had to be removed upon the completion of the property transfer. Extensive work was done at the cemetery between the priest’s burial in August and the day of its consecration.

“From that point in time, we hadn’t even done the excavation to level it and to get rid of all the crushed rock and debris. That was the first step, and then once it was leveled we had loads after loads, large dump trucks, come in with topsoil, which is not cheap, and we’ve got at least 2 1/2 inches of topsoil in all four gardens,” Deacon Smith said.

“Then after the topsoil was deployed, it was all seeded heavily and straw was put in place. Before we did the seeding and strawing, we installed a full sprinkler system, so we’ll be one of the very, very few cemeteries in Knoxville where every garden is sprinkled, so even in July, August, September, we’ll have green grass. Obviously, the most expensive thing was the paving of the loop road, so that was done, and it’s turned out beautifully.”

Deacon Smith praised the Seftons, who are natives of Great Britain, for their donation of the cemetery land.

“From the cathedral to the cathedral organ to things behind the scenes that people have no idea of, they’re just constant givers to the Church, and they love the Church,” he said. “They definitely wanted a holy, sacred cemetery to be buried in, and they wanted it to look like a cemetery, so we’re going to require upright monuments. When it’s all said and done, it’s going to look like a holy Catholic cemetery.”

The Seftons donated the property in fall 2024, and the deed transfer to the diocese closed on June 1.

The large building on the site could potentially house a memorial chapel and its kitchen could allow it to be used for gatherings after burials, such as receptions or luncheons.

Parishioners who desire traditional burials with a headstone—not a flat plaque—are encouraged to reserve a plot at Holy Cross Cemetery. The cemetery will not charge to bury babies and will charge less for smaller plots needed to bury an urn.

At the time of the consecration, the cemetery had 87 families on a waiting list for 226 plots, with some families having purchased as many as 10 to 12 plots. To be put on a waiting list for a plot, visit cemeteryholycross.com. Deacon Smith earlier said that the cost for a plot “will definitely be a fair, just, competitive price.”