New cemetery director wants to help families

BY BILL DOYLE
CFP CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER – James Brasco, the new director of cemeteries for the Diocese of Worcester, has two main goals.
One is to make people aware of the availability and benefits of Catholic cemeteries in the diocese, including St. John’s and Notre Dame in the city. Another goal is to provide families more options beyond the traditional in-ground burial.
One of the benefits is advanced planning – purchasing a cemetery plot long before one is needed – which he described as “a relief to the family.” Advanced planning doesn’t have to be rushed and payment plans are available – unlike at the time of death.
“I have seen firsthand what a difference it makes for families,” he said. “I need to make them aware that they can come in ahead of time to make all the decisions, take care of all the financial responsibilities prior to a service and therefore freeing them up at the time of a passing to spend their time with their family and to other obligations.”
Beside in-ground burial, other options include above-ground entombment in a mausoleum, cremation niches, cremation gardens and columbariums – an above-ground structure with cremation niches for urns to be stored. There aren’t any columbariums yet in the Diocese of Worcester’s cemeteries, but the Archdiocese of Boston has them, he said. 
Mr. Brasco, 52, became director of cemeteries for the diocese on June 1 after serving the previous four years as director of sales and marketing for the 25 cemeteries in the Catholic Cemetery Association of the Archdiocese of Boston. For Worcester, sales and marketing will be only part of his job. He said he’s looking forward to the increased responsibility of also overseeing about 20 staffers in record keeping, grave digging, maintenance, and perpetual care. He said every cemetery, diocesan and municipal, suffers from a lack of manpower, but he’s been impressed with his cemetery staff.
Mr. Brasco’s predecessor, Robert V. Ackerman, retired in December.
Mr. Brasco said nearly 60 percent of the dead are cremated in Massachusetts, about twice as much as in the 1980s, and the percentage is expected to increase. Of those cremated, Mr. Brasco said, too few are buried, probably only about 30 percent, even though the Catholic Church requests that remains be buried.
“It’s the right thing to do and it’s what is asked by the Catholic Church,” he said, “that those cremated remains be interred in an earth burial or niche and that they have permanent memorialization. That’s part of the canon law on cremation. So, I want to make people aware of that.”
Some people don’t want to think or talk about their final resting places, but Mr. Brasco hopes to make parishioners more comfortable about doing so by reaching out to them through the media and direct mail, and by visiting parishes and senior centers.
He said unfortunately when some families lose a loved one, they don’t know whether the departed wished to be buried or cremated because they never talked about it.
Mr. Brasco said that last year St. John’s Cemetery serviced about 300 burials, nearly half the number of burials in all of the diocese’s cemeteries. He also said St. John’s has enough room to accommodate burials for at least another 25-30 years. The cemetery system gets some support from Partners in Charity. 
Appointments for purchases of cemetery plots at St. John’s include a meeting with Mr. Brasco and a tour of the cemetery.
Perpetual care includes maintenance of the grounds, roads and trees in the cemetery. People can water flowers around their loved one’s gravesite and clean the gravestone themselves or pay a fee for the cemetery staff to do it.
St. John’s Cemetery hosts ceremonies on Memorial Day and All Souls Day, and Mr. Brasco hopes to resume the monthly Masses in the mausoleum chapel that were canceled by the pandemic.
Mr. Brasco would also like to modernize the cemetery equipment and upgrade some buildings with new roofs and carpeting.
Prior to working for the Archdiocese of Boston’s cemetery system, Mr. Brasco spent 26 years in the funeral home business in Canton, Waltham, Belmont and South Carolina as a funeral director, general manager, vice president and operations manager. He’s had his funeral license for more than 30 years.
Mr. Brasco followed his grandfather and father into the funeral home business. Over the years, he has learned how to help grieving people cope with the loss of loved ones, first as a funeral director and now as a cemetery director.
“Honestly,” he said, “that’s probably why I stayed in this industry my entire life. With the opportunity to meet with families at what can be sometimes one of the darkest portions of their life, you try to ease them and make them know that you’re going to do your best for their spouse, mother, father, child. They’re going to be in good hands with you.
“I actually enjoy meeting with those families. I feel good being able to help them.”
In the case of a great grandmother who lived a long, happy life, Mr. Brasco said, “sometimes death is not an enemy.”
He said, “As we all believe in our faith, she’s going home, she’s going on to something much better. They believe that and I believe that. We do our best to usher her into that new chapter peacefully.”
Others die young tragically.
“We all can’t understand the loss of a child or anything of that nature,” he said. “But in your heart, you want to do that best for those people and you know you will. Those are the times you feel you’ve done a service for them.”
Mr. Brasco has learned to listen as grieving people talk and never assume that he knows how they feel. 
“I’ve seen every aspect of that passing,” he said, “every dynamic of the family from the moment of someone on hospice passing away at home to them pulling away from the grave after the funeral service is completed.”
He’s also well aware of how funeral directors and cemetery directors work together and with families because he’s served both roles.
Mr. Brasco grew up in Waltham and Newton and graduated from Arlington Catholic High School, Northeastern University and the Commonwealth Institute of Funeral Service in Houston, Texas.
He is the father of five sons. He lives in Northborough and attends St. Bernadette and St. Rose of Lima parishes.