Sacramento family searches for grandparents’ graves after Catholic cemetery moves remains | Call Kurtis Investigates

By Kurtis Ming, Kevin Wing

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    SACRAMENTO, California (KOVR) — A Sacramento family has spent years searching for grandparents’ graves, and now they have learned that the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento moved their remains but cannot give the family the exact location.

The family contacted Call Kurtis to look into the matter.

“It saddens me to know that they were disrespected,” said Margo Villegas.

Villegas’ grandparents were buried at Sacramento’s St. Joseph’s Cemetery during the Great Depression. Her grandfather, Mauricio Galbez, died in 1929, and her grandmother, Maria Galbez, passed away in 1931.

Decades later, in the 1960s, the Catholic Church decided that the section of the cemetery where the Galbezes were laid to rest was better suited for a school. The cemetery dug up and moved the remains of the Galbezes as well as some 100 to 150 others to make room for Bishop Manogue High School – which has since closed.

The decision made six decades ago to build a school and dig up her grandparents’ graves to relocate them to another section of the cemetery has remained upsetting to Villegas, 78.

“I would like to know exactly where my grandparents are laying to rest,” she said.

Limited cemetery records do not say exactly where the Galbezes’ remains ended up inside St. Joseph’s Cemetery. Cemetery management turned to maps that the Sacramento Historical Society created in the 1980s and compared them to the cemetery’s own records, suspecting that the area that is designated as Dorm 4 houses the relocated graves.

At a glance, the Dorm 4 section appears unkempt and in disarray. The ground has sunk, and headstones and grave markers are randomly scattered.

“We were very shocked to find out they were here in this area, and this area disrespected as it is – sunk in and uncared for,” Villegas said. “And I have to stand on this edge here and say, okay, somewhere in here are my grandparents.”

Cemetery officials found a grave marker for Villegas’ grandfather. But, nothing could be found for her grandmother. Villegas does not trust that her grandfather’s grave marker pinpoints where her grandparents are buried.

“In the mid-1960s, we were not the Dark Ages,” Villegas explained. “This thing should have been take care of properly.”

Moving graves is a part of California’s history. In the 1930s, voters in San Francisco approved relocating 150,000 graves from valuable city land to neighboring Colma.

And, in the 1950s, before Folsom Lake was flooded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved graves to the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery in El Dorado Hills.

As recently as 2005, the expansion of the UC Davis Cancer Center required the movement of 72 indigent graves to Sacramento’s St. Mary’s Cemetery, where more than 10,000 indigents are buried, all among examples of moved cemeteries in Sacramento County.

This situation begs the question: If you buried your loved one today, what is to say that years from now someone could dig up your loved one and move them in order to put up a building or build a road or freeway?

Death care expert Valarie Rose of Sacramento’s American River College said California now has restrictions when it comes to moving graves from government-owned and privately-owned cemeteries.

When you bury a loved one in a cemetery, you would think that it’s going to be their final resting place.

“Yes,” Rose said.

But, what’s the reality?

“In most cases, that’s true,” she added.

“California has a funeral and cemetery bureau that oversees cemeteries,” Rose explained. “But, we’ve learned not in this case, because the state has no jurisdiction over religious cemeteries.”

So, if the Catholic Church decided they would like to build a school on a cemetery, could they do so legally?

“Yes, yes,” Rose said.

State law explains this in the Business and Professions Code Section 7612.2 as published by the California Legislature.

So, would they?

Jaime Soto, bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento, would not sit down with CBS13 to answer that question, nor would anyone from the cemetery and funeral services office for the diocese.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also ignored our repeated written requests.

The Code of Canon Law describes that, where possible, the Catholic Church can have its own cemeteries.

Scott Miller, the chief operating officer of the Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services arm of the Diocese of Sacramento – which operates St. Joseph’s Cemetery – said in this case, poor recordkeeping was a factor in the graves that were moved to make room for Bishop Manogue High School in the 1960s.

Based on the records they did have, in July of this year, they randomly dug up three areas of St. Joseph’s Cemetery a few feet down.

Cemetery staff provided Villegas with photographs of what is left of tightly laid wooden boxes and bone fragments and determined that it is reasonable to believe that all individuals laid to rest were disinterred and reinterred in this location prior to construction of Bishop Manogue High School.

It is also reasonable to believe that the headstones do not directly correspond to the remains buried directly below them, in most cases.

For Villegas, it is unsettling.

“I’m very disappointed and saddened to know that they were moved carelessly and possibly disrespectfully into an area that not everybody fits, so that they were just randomly turned side to side every which way they fit,” she said.

Villegas wants the Catholic Church to pay for DNA testing, hoping to know the place she leaves flowers is at least close to her grandparents’ final resting place.

“I’m hopeful that the Diocese will do a little further digging and excavation here to find out who’s where,” she said. “There’s a lot of souls here. I mean, I think they deserve that in and in the life that they had. And then being brought here thinking that this is where their final resting place would be in an area that is a respected cemetery.”

“And, I think that this, the Catholic Diocese, is amiss in this area and that they disrespected so many souls,” Villegas added. “I am surprised and saddened that in the 1960s, there was technology to where this should have been done in a more proper, respectful manner.”

A DNA expert said if Villegas’ grandparents were embalmed, their DNA would have been erased.

After CBS13 began investigating this matter, signs went up in that section of St. Joseph Cemetery stating that all headstones located there would be temporarily removed so that soil can be added to level the sunken area. Afterwards, all grave markers would be reset atop the new soil.

The project is set to begin sometime between Nov. 1 and Nov. 18 and is scheduled to be completed prior to Christmas.

CBS13 has given the cemetery staff, the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento and the U.S. Conference of Bishops repeated opportunities to say something to affirm that this kind of situation would never happen again, but they never responded to our requests.

Meanwhile, Villegas is considering relocating her grandparents’ remains closer to the final resting places of other family members. That is, if she only knew exactly where they are laid to rest.

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