SAN DIEGO — “It’s more a ministry than a business,” Mario DeBlasio said of Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery and Mausoleum.
DeBlasio, 81, was the cemetery’s general manager for 27 years, before retiring on March 31.
For grieving families, he worked to make a challenging situation as easy as possible.
DeBlasio told The Southern Cross that some of the most rewarding moments of his job were when he met with families who were “really stressing and … crying” when they showed up, but who were “thanking me and smiling” when they left.
Over the years, when pastors reached out to him about families that lacked the financial means to bury a loved one, he said, the cemetery would inter them at no charge.
A seminarian for the Diocese of San Diego from 1965 to 1968, the Italian-born DeBlasio said that what most attracted him to the priesthood was a desire for “helping people.”
He ultimately got married and started a family – with Angeline, his wife of 54 years, he has two children and three grandchildren – but he found in mortuarial work another way to help others.
For some, being surrounded by reminders of mortality might seem depressing, but that wasn’t the case for DeBlasio.
“You’re not concentrating on the fact of the death,” he said. “You’re concentrating on trying to see how you can help this family going through such a difficult time.”
DeBlasio accepted the job of general manager of Holy Cross Cemetery in March of 1998, after 29 years with Service Corporation International (SCI).
The only Catholic diocesan cemetery in San Diego County, Holy Cross is the final resting place for about 70,000 people. Of that number, more than 15,000 people were interred during DeBlasio’s years at the helm.
Under his watch, the cemetery has grown. For example, a two-floor, outdoor mausoleum was completed in 2002, a maintenance building in 2012, and a new office building in 2015.
DeBlasio also coordinated the cemetery’s purchase of adjacent property that will provide an additional 10 acres for much-needed future expansion.
And he coordinated the purchase of about 15 acres near St. Thomas More Parish in Oceanside as the future site of Good Shepherd Catholic Cemetery, a second diocesan cemetery for San Diego County.
Now retired, DeBlasio is looking for new ways to help.
“In fact,” said DeBlasio, a member of St. Gabriel Parish in Poway for about nine years, “my wife already volunteered me for the church to do things there.”
For almost 30 years, Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis served on either the advisory board of Holy Cross Cemetery or as diocesan director of cemeteries, before retiring in 2023.
“I really can’t say enough good about Mario as a person, faithful Catholic and exemplary manager of Holy Cross,” he said.
He said that DeBlasio “went out of his way to do ‘little’ things that needed to be done, without any expectation of notice or thanks,” and was “instrumental in pulling the cemetery and mausoleum out of debt,” among other achievements.
Msgr. Mikulanis’ successor as diocesan director of cemeteries, Father Efrain Bautista, praised DeBlasio for his “great heart, one of service.”
“Mario was really an institution at Holy Cross,” said Father Bautista. “No one can think about Holy Cross without thinking also of Mario.”
Father Michael Robinson, a member of the cemetery’s advisory board, noted that DeBlasio “always had a smile and a positive attitude that signaled that we could meet the needs of the people that we served.”
“In his work at Holy Cross,” he said, “Mario truly was accomplishing a spiritual work of mercy.”
