Salesians Visit Province Cemetery

Salesians Visit Province Cemetery

Every Salesian retreat held at the Don Bosco Retreat Center in Haverstraw, N.Y., includes an optional visit to the province cemetery in Goshen, N.Y., a 45-minute drive away.  About 3 dozen confreres have been on retreat this week (June 2-8), and 19 of us paid the visit on June 7 to remember and to pray for our deceased confreres, both those buried in Goshen and those buried elsewhere (their names are listed on the Don Bosco monument pictured above), as well as for a few other people buried there.

174 Salesians are buried at Goshen, going back to the 1st confrere who died in what is now the New Rochelle Province, Fr. Filomeno Ferrara, who died in 1910.  The remains of confreres who died before 1926 were moved to Goshen in that year from the various places where they'd been interred, and the cemetery was established in 1938 for permanent interment.

The Salesians acquired an old estate on Main St. in Goshen in 1925 and established a novitiate there.  That was followed by St. Michael's School, a boarding elementary school, which was closed in 1961.  Salesian Junior Seminary, an aspirantate, relocated there in 1961 from its prior site at Haverstraw (the present Marian Shrine) and remained open until the end of 1985.  The school became a retreat center for a few years before that, too, closed.  The Salesians lost the property eventually to the town of Goshen as a result of a tax issue, except for the cemetery.  The town created Salesian Park and built a new library where the school buildings and playing fields once stood.

The new town library under construction, 2019