Across the centuries, Church crypts — from Roman catacombs to American cathedrals — testify that death is not the end but the beginning of eternal life.
In the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland, a chapel adjoins the north transept. There’s a wrought-iron gate with Requiescant in Pace fashioned above the entrance. It’s the cathedral’s burial crypt, containing the tombs of the deceased bishops of Cleveland.
While a “crypt” implies a place under or below a structure, Cleveland’s cathedral burial chamber on the ground floor, named the Resurrection Chapel, reflects that definition as well as the tradition of burial crypts throughout the history of Christianity. It is significant that figures of both St. Peter and St. Paul are prominent on the Resurrection Chapel’s upper half of the north wall, as both martyrs of the early Church were buried in crypts: St. Peter below the altar in the basilica that bears his name, and St. Paul, buried under what is now the papal altar of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
“Every ordinary, that is, a bishop of a diocese, is a member of that diocese and has a right to be buried in the cathedral crypt,” Bishop Roger Gries, retired auxiliary bishop of Cleveland, explained to the Register.
A contemporary example of a burial crypt is below the apse of one of the most famous churches in the world, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, which began construction on the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1882, and is set to be completed in 2026. The visionary behind the mammoth basilica, Catalan architect Venerable Antoni Gaudí, is buried in the Sagrada Familia Crypt. The crypt, completed in 1889, is the oldest part of the basilica.
Two California cathedrals built in this century both contain crypts below the church: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and Christ Cathedral in the Diocese of Orange. This intentional inclusion signifies conscious architectural, theological and artistic efforts to connect these major places of worship in Catholic California with the Church throughout time.
Among the many tombs in the Crypt Mausoleum of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is the final resting place of one of Hollywood’s finest actors, Gregory Peck, a lifelong Catholic whose 2003 funeral took place in the cathedral, followed immediately by the interment of his body in the Crypt Mausoleum. In Orange, the St. Callistus Chapel and Crypts were dedicated in 2024. Its name is a nod to the Diocese of Orange parish of St. Callistus, which moved to Christ Cathedral back in 2013. At the same time, however, the name echoes the catacombs of St. Callistus in Rome, which became the burial place for the Christian community of Rome in the third century.
“Christians in Rome began the practice of burying their dead in crypts in the catacombs for several reasons,” Francesco Cesareo, retired president of Assumption College and now part-time instructor at Villanova University and St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, told the Register.
“First, it was a rejection of the pagan practice of cremation, which was common in Rome. The Christian rejection of cremation was due to the belief in the bodily resurrection. Thus, bodies were ‘deposited’ (the actual word etched on the slab covering the niche in which the body was placed) as the deceased awaited the resurrection. Secondly, land was scarce in Rome, which resulted in the multilayered galleries of the catacombs, making the most use of available land. Thus, crypt burials were done for a practical reason.
“Finally, crypt burials in the catacombs were a way to highlight the communal connection of the Christian community,” he continued, “since Christians wanted to be buried close to the martyrs of the early Church, which reinforced their shared faith and hope.”
Relics of a martyr from the early Church are kept within the Resurrection Chapel in Cleveland’s cathedral, which is also connected to the St. Callistus catacombs. These relics of St. Christina (or St. Christine) were discovered in the St. Callistus catacombs in the 18th century. They are from a 13- or 14-year-old girl dating from about A.D. 300, her martyrdom attested to by the vial of blood she was buried with, which can still be seen in the Resurrection Chapel reliquary.
On Nov. 2, 1946, a new priest celebrated his first Mass in the 11th-century Crypt of St. Leonard under Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland, the burial site of 17th-century kings. The new priest’s name was Karol Wojtyla, who would become Pope John Paul II. In his final encyclical before his death in 2005, Pope St. John Paul II reflected on celebrating that Mass in the Crypt of St. Leonard (and every day hence for the rest of his life), recalling when his eyes “have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way ‘merge’ and the drama of Golgotha is presented in a living way, thus revealing its mysterious ‘contemporaneity,’” as the Pope wrote in Ecclesia de Eucharistia.
These crypts, of course, reflect the most sacred one.
“Perhaps the most significant crypt in history is that in which Jesus Christ was interred after his crucifixion,” explained Father Christopher Smith, former rector of Christ Cathedral, who spearheaded the St. Callistus Chapel and Crypts project. “The discovery that the body of Jesus was no longer in the tomb three days after his death was the first sign that Jesus was risen from the dead as he had promised. That empty tomb is forever a sign that Jesus’ promise of eternal life was fulfilled,” he said.
This insight from Father Smith affirmed the meaning of the name chosen for the chapel crypt in Cleveland’s cathedral.
“For Christians, belief in the promise of eternal life changes everything,” Father Smith said. “It changes the walls of crypts from being merely receptacles for deceased persons into places of hope, recalling the empty tomb of Jesus on the glorious day of his resurrection. Belief in the promise of eternal life is the difference between seeing our sinful actions as final stops or temporary setbacks that we can overcome and leave behind with God’s grace. Belief in the promise of eternal life changes everything.”
