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Why be Buried in a Catholic Cemetery
Catholic Cemeteries are an extension of our Parishes; a place for prayer, reflection, hope and remembrance. The cemetery is a vital part of Catholic life, expressing our faith, reverence and respect for sacred burial on consecrated grounds.
With the promise of everlasting life and the hope of Resurrection in Christ, Catholic Cemeteries offer a place to celebrate the treasured lives that have gone before us.
The cemetery is a vital part of Catholic life, expressing our faith, reverence and respect. We offer various sacred burial options and conduct many events throughout the year, for our families, to honor the ones they love.
Our CFCS Cemetery Services
Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services of the Diocese of Oakland (CFCS) is a charitable organization founded in faith and dedicated to providing education, support and professional services. We offer many cemetery burial options designed to meet the financial preferences of our families, from simple offerings, to unique personalized options, to honor you and your loved ones for generations to come.
Ground Burial Options
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Traditional ground burials, including earth and crypt burials, have long been honored forms of memorialization. At CFCS we provide traditional ground burial options that allow you to express and honor a life lived. Our experienced Family Service Advisor will assist you in all the details in choosing the perfect resting place and memorial for your loved one. Whether you are interested in advanced planning or in need of immediate assistance, we are here to guide you through your selection and design process.
Crypt Burials
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We offer a complete line of crypt burial options including – indoor spaces, outdoor garden options, and private family garden crypts. Selecting the location and style of a crypt is a very personal decision, and we want to ensure that all your wishes are met. Whether you are interested in advanced planning or in need of immediate assistance, we are here to guide you through your selection and design process.
Private Family Estates
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Family Monument Estates and Mausoleums are a wonderful way to preserve the family heritage while offering a historical resting place for future generations. Estates can be fully customized to reflect your family legacy and create a permanent tribute to lives well lived.
Family Monument Estates: allows family members to be together in a beautifully designated area which can also be accented with special landscaping and/or architectural elements to commemorate the lives of loved ones.
Family Cremation Estates: Creative and unique multiple-generational option to personalize family legacies.
Family Mausoleums: are lasting structures that can be uniquely personalized honoring family heritage for generations to come.
Niche Burials
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At Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services (CFCS ) of the Diocese of Oakland we understand the various needs of our community and offer a wide variety of options to create a loving memorial. With a niche burial, cremated remains are placed in an urn, and then placed in a niche based on your personal preference. We offer various sizes, styles, and locations on our cemetery grounds. Whether you are interested in advanced planning or in need of immediate assistance, we are here to guide you through your selection process.
We offer:
Single niche options
Companion side-by-side niches
Glass front niches
Cremation Pedestals and Benches
Unique personalized options
Memorialization
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CFCS offers a large variety of memorialization options for our faith community. Each memorial is uniquely designed based on your preferences and serves as a reflection and tribute to the individual’s life. Our experienced family service staff is here to assist you through the entire design process to help you create a lasting beautiful memorial.
Our various memorial options include:
Flush memorials
Pillow top memorials
Traditional upright memorials
Cremation memorials and benches
We offer a large variety of design options and colors to choose from
For a more personal touch, we offer custom memorial designing options that allow our families more flexibility to memorialize their loved one.
FUNERAL
Sharing The Moment
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CREMATION
Embracing New Traditions
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MISSION PROGRAMS
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Our Spring Sale Has Started
You can see how this popup was set up in our step-by-step guide: https://wppopupmaker.com/guides/auto-opening-announcement-popups/
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November 2, All Souls Day: Our gates will be open for visitors at sunrise at 7:00 am and will close at Sunset at 6:00 pm. Please plan accordingly.
For more information on the planned events, please contact your cemetery.
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Thank you for understanding as we implement measures to ensure your safety at our cemetery locations. Our offices are open during normal hours and we do ask that you follow guidelines and wear a mask.
Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services will continue to follow Diocesan guidelines as well as Federal, County and City ordinances regarding public gatherings. When visiting our locations, please plan accordingly.
* Mausoleums are open
* Practice Social Distancing
* Mask are required
* No Music
Thank you for understanding!
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St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955
St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 is rich with California chronicles and tradition. Historic in character, in 1863 St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 was the first cemetery established in the community of Oakland. Located in what was then the outskirts of the city, and meeting the needs of only one parish, the parishes and the cemetery grew simultaneously.
St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 is now a gorgeous lush forty-two acre property. There are more than 40 sections devoted to ground burial, several community mausoleums, and facilities for both ground and above-ground inurnment of cremated remains; there are also numerous private family mausoleums on the property. The most recent development, Saint Joseph Section, provides commanding views of the Oakland and the San Francisco skyline. This section has a substantial space for full ground burial; facilities for ground and aboveground inurnment of cremated remains are also provided.
Over the course of the cemetery’s nearly 145 years of service, more than 70,000 committal services have taken place. St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 currently supports the Catholic burial needs of 25 parishes of Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley, providing options for traditional ground burial, cremation niche, mausoleum crypts, and family estates. In addition, St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 provides funeral and cremation services to the community, becoming a complete resource for your cemetery and funeral needs. Whether you are interested in advanced planning or in need of immediate assistance, our Family Service Advisors and Funeral staff are available to offer support and guidance to our families.
St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center FD 1955 also offers various special programs and events for our faith community throughout the year, serving the living and honoring loved ones that have gone before us.
Memorial Mass is held on the first Saturday of each month.
Our mission is to provide guidance and wisdom on end-of-life services. While we do charge for our services in what has become a very commercial industry, we are committed as a charity to offer innovative programs that provide financial assistance, free options, and programs to meet the needs of our faith community.
Pastoral Care Program
CFCS is here to help bereaved Catholic families suffering the loss of a loved one. Too often, that suffering is combined with physical and social isolation, and the Church has a chance to fill the void of loss with faith and compassion. Our qualified Pastoral Ministers’ will make contact with our recently bereaved families, offering prayer, consolation, and comfort to those in a time of suffering.
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All Souls Remembrance Program
CFCS offers at no charge, to anyone, of any faith, who has cremated remains at home or is considering scattering, the dignified committal of the remains at any of our cemeteries. The committal will occur at the All Souls Remembrance Crypt and then the remains will be permanently interred within the consecrated grounds of the Catholic Cemetery
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Mother Teresa Program
With the Mother Teresa Program, CFCS is able to give back to the community by ensuring that those in need in our community receive sacred and dignified funeral, cremation and cemetery services.
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Family Heritage Program
This unique program allows for graves or crypts already owned by families to be transformed into a family estate. Depending on the grave or crypt selected, a number of cremated remains can typically be added. The plot will serve as a family’s final gathering place, allowing family members who have lived apart to be together on their final journey.
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Precious Lives Program
This program provides caring funeral and cemetery financial support for those who have suffered the loss of a child. The program also provides sacred interment services in the Order of Christian Funerals, for hospitals within the community, for the death of an unborn child at any of our Catholic Cemeteries.
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November 2, All Souls Day: Our gates will be open for visitors at sunrise at 7:00 am and will close at Sunset at 6:00 pm. Please plan accordingly.
For more information on the planned events, please contact your cemetery.
Rosa Parks Essay Final Four
Rosa Parks Essay Final Four
Congratulations to the 10 finalists of the Rosa Parks essay. When I first started thinking about an “Essay Contest” I wanted the students to really think outside the box. For those of you who do not know, I am a single father. I raised my son since he was 10 months old. He was in grade school when his teacher said that he would not be able to do complex math because he wasn’t fast enough, little concentration, lack of focus. I knew my son wasn’t dumb, so I purchased an IBM XT. I had him play math games online. Today, he is an Aeronautical Engineer for NASA. He started working at NASA during the summer of his Junior year in High School! He has a 27-year tenure with NASA, now. I was hard on him, and I want to be hard on each of you. I wanted each of you to be the best you can be and to ask more of you than you thought you could do.
I thought that it was necessary to push students to become better writers and to do better research. I wanted the students to be inquisitive, asking questions of your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and teachers of what it was like to live when they were growing up. I was looking for derogatory phrases like “Colored Only”, “Wetback”, “Braceros”, “Chink”, “Gook”, “WOP” what did they mean and who used them? I was looking for phrases that were used like “Better Red than Dead,” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
I was hoping that at least one student would bring up the name of Viola Liuzzo, 1965. She was a white Detroit Homemaker, a Civil Rights Activist who was shot and killed by the Ku Klux Klan, the same day the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, led 25,000 people to Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery from Selma to protest the denial of the voting right for blacks. She tried to make a difference and the consequence was not in her favor. Then there was John Millis Menard, the first back elected to Congress. The white Congress refused to seat him. Or, how about the 1968 Olympics with Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a black glove and a fist raised high in the air, they were suspended from the US Track & Field. Mohammad Ali chose not to go into Military Service and was stripped of his boxing title. However today he is remembered as one of the greatest boxers and most beloved by his fans.
You have the chance for a do-over! You have a chance to use part of your summer studying, researching, writing. You are living in a time that many will not forget for years to come. They say history repeats itself. What happened during the 1918 pandemic? Have we learned anything from what they did then and what we are doing now? I would hope that each of you that will be in grades 5 through 8 will be able to better research, make better arguments when I provide the topic next January! When I was in college we had to write tons of papers. Our professors would use the term “Critical Thinking.” Thinking outside the box; write with a new perspective, a new way of looking at the same issues.
In no particular order, the four winners are:
• Alexander Diaz
• Olivia Ritchie
• Jose Quesada
• Fey Olawale
I will announce where each winner placed in July. I am hoping that we will be able to gather together, maybe still wear masks but come to take pictures, eat some cake and celebrate with your parents, teachers, Principals and whoever wants to come. Congratulations to each of you!
Rosa Parks Essay Contest Finalists
Rosa Parks Essay Contest Finalists - Catholic Funeral & Cemetery Services
Rosa Parks Essay Contest Finalists
For the past 6 years, Tom Luzod, Location Manager of Sorensen Chapel has had a student essay contest. Sorensen Chapel was proud to host another Community Student Essay Contest open to all grades 5 through 8. The essay must be written solely by the student; however, we encourage parents to read what their students have written and to guide, question, and probe that the students are providing strong, sound arguments. Students were given the topic in January 2020 and were to have them completed and turned in to Sorensen Chapel by March 16th. On Saturday, March 28th, all parents, students, teachers, and the public were invited to hear the reading of the 10 finalists. Due to the Coronavirus and Health Order, postponement of the event was necessary.
The following 2020 Essay Topic was given:
On, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver’s instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger. Three black passengers complied with the driver, Rosa Parks did not. Rosa Parks later recalled that her refusal wasn’t because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.
Is it ever right to defy the law as Rosa Parks had done, why or why not? Rosa Parks said she was tired of “Giving in.” Can you provide some examples of what she was alluding to as “Giving In?” Act of Defiance, is there any issue/issues today that would justify and Act of Defiance and what of the consequences?
Approximately 80 essays were turned in. The essays were given a score of 1 through 10. 10 being the highest. 2 middle schools chose to enter; Faith Ringgold School of Arts & Science and All Saints Catholic School. Awards will be given to the top 4 essays on Wednesday, June 3rd.
1st place $200.00
2nd place $100.00
3rd place $50.00
4th place $25.00
The following names have scored a 9 or 10 on their essay and the school they attend:
ALL SAINTS CATHOLIC SCHOOL
Olivia Ritchie, Fey Olawale, Alexander Diaz, Xochitl Santana Vega, Zachary Lopez, Andrea Jerald, Audrey Retodo
FAITH RINGGOLD SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCE
Jose, Oliver Langan, Alexander Medrano
