Prayer service at cathedral to honor those who died homeless

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SALT LAKE CITY — “Forgotten.” “Unloved.” “Invisible.”

These are words people who are homeless sometimes use to describe themselves. Painful and heart-wrenching words that reflect an ocean of loss, they are particularly poignant when they are used after a homeless person passes away. But that is too often the reality for these children of God who often leave this world unheralded and unremembered.

One woman wants to help change that here in Salt Lake City. Shantel McBride, director of community care at Neil O’Donnell Funeral Home, is teaming up with Father Martin Diaz, rector of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, to remember and honor more than 150 homeless or indigent people who died in the city during the past year. This will be done at the “We are All One” event on Aug. 17.

McBride came up with the idea when she toured Wiscombe Memorial, a sister facility to Neil O’Donnell Funeral Home, and saw the room where cremation containers of unclaimed homeless people were stored. Under a contract with Salt Lake County, Wiscombe provides cremation and subsequent burial services for those who were indigent. (Their remains are stored for a sufficient length of time to allow families to claim them).

“I just felt this heaviness,” McBride said. “I thought, ‘Those people came here; somebody loved them. There’s somebody out there who did love them, and they did bring something, maybe taught some people.’  I believe everyone has a purpose and a reason that they come here … and they served that purpose, and their mission was complete, and they deserve to be honored.”

The We Are All One event will begin with a small reception and program at Neil O’Donnell’s. Participants will then walk to the Cathedral of the Madeleine, where Fr. Diaz will lead a prayer, the names of the deceased will be read, and the cathedral’s bells will be rung in their honor.

“The cathedral is always interested in the larger community of Salt Lake City and Utah,” Fr. Diaz said. “The cathedral is meant to be of service to the whole community, and so if the cathedral is able to help pray for and honor those people who passed away who were homeless, we want to be part of the community that is caring, the community that doesn’t want to forget people just because in a sense they’re unknown.”

A freewill offering at the event will be donated to the cathedral’s Good Samaritan program, which provides sack lunches each day to those in need. The event will conclude with refreshments at the funeral home.

Shawn Wiscombe, one of the owners of Neil O’Donnell Funeral Home, said he was happy to sponsor the event.

“I just feel like everyone has a story, everyone has lived a life, everyone has been born into a family that loved and cared about them and for some individuals, who knows why they end up without family that they’re able to contact?” he said. “That’s not for me to judge and I feel like they need that same tender care that we would provide to any individual.”