St. John’S Orthodox Gets Ok From County For Cemetery Site Plans Have Been In The Works For Almost Two Years

For the first time since 1977, a new cemetery is opening in Kootenai County. The cemetery, which is still just an empty space in a field, is owned and operated by St. John’s Orthodox Church in Post Falls.

The new cemetery will join 30 currently in the county, and many of that number are either small family plots, abandoned or both. Only a few, such as the Sacred Heart Cemetery at the Cataldo Mission, were founded by churches.

Plans for the new cemetery have been in the works for nearly two years, says Father Gregory Horton of St. John’s. The cemetery received approval from the county last April and the site plan was approved in January. “The next phase is to just develop the site,” says Horton.

The church has set aside a quarter of an acre for the cemetery. The graves will be laid out in the shape of the cross, with the four open corners filled will grass, flowers, trees and benches. The church also plans to fence in the site, complete with a wrought iron gate.

“It will be rather old world,” Horton says. “Really, it will look like a nice park from the outside. There won’t be any issues with the neighbors looking at headstones.”

Neighbors won’t be too much of a problem since the church owns eight acres at its site at 4750 E. 20th and houses in the area are widely spaced. “I think that was a big factor in it being approved, by both the bishop and by the county. They didn’t want it kind of crammed in.”

The site has room for 132 graves, which will be available to church members. “We are approved by the county specifically as a parish cemetery,” he says. “Part of the conditions for burying here was that we would not be a commercial cemetery. We’re offering this as a free service to the people of our parish.”

The idea behind starting a parish cemetery came from church members’ desire to keep their families together even in death and to have a site of consecrated ground to use for burials.

“As it is now, if I bury someone is a public cemetery, I have to go and pre-consecrate that one grave and bless it first,” he says. “It is not ideal.”

The requirement of blessed ground is important to Orthodox Christians because of their belief that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. “Even after the spirit leaves (the body), we consider it holy,” says Horton. “We still consider it a vessel of the Holy Spirit.”

There also are several practical reasons to have their own cemetery. In addition to having a shorter and easier funeral procession, a church cemetery also makes it easier for families to have the traditional memorial service at the graves of family members on the Sunday after Easter.

It is not uncommon for Orthodox Churches to have their own cemetery. “In older communities, what they did was either put a church cemetery right on the church property or they had a section in the public cemetery, or even in the Catholic cemetery,” says Horton. “But there was always ground set aside, sanctified for that purpose.

“The idea of setting aside ground is as ancient as Judeo-Christianity.”

The church plans to cover development and maintenance costs with a special memorial fund that people can donate to in memory of a loved one. Landscaping will start when weather permits, but people can now be buried there at any time.

“Nobody’s in a hurry, though, it seems.”