6/13/21 – 1400 S Wolf Rd Hillside, IL 60162, (708) 449-8300,
https://www.catholiccemeterieschicago.org/Locations/Details/MtCarmel
Q-tips say: After a lovely visit with long time friends eating munchies & a drink, we were off to the Lizzadro Museum and then a drive thru the cemetery. Decided not to walk due to the weather being quite hot. Then off to Bohemian Crystal for dinner.
Mrs. Q says: Ever wonder where many of the gangsters/mobsters of yesterday are buried? Here. Mount Carmel Cemetery is also the final resting place of numerous local organized crime figures, the most notorious of these being Al Capone. Most – if not all – of the criminals buried at Mount Carmel were denied the blessing of a funeral in the Catholic Church. Out of necessity, most services were held in a morgue, funeral parlor or at graveside. Al Capone and his two brothers; Dean O’Banion, Hymie Weiss, the Terrible Genna Brothers, Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci, Michael Merlo, Frank Nitti, Sam Giancana and the graves of some of the undertakers who buried them.
He was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago. In 1950, Capone’s remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Salvatore, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
While Mount Carmel is renowned as one of the largest and most impressive Catholic cemeteries in Chicago, located at its center is the “jewel in the cemetery’s crown” – the exquisitely beautiful Mausoleum of the Bishops and Archbishops of Chicago.
This beautiful mausoleum required seven years to build and was completed in 1912. It has a stair-stepped pyramidal roof surmounted by a statue of the Archangel Gabriel, sounding his trumpet at the moment of the final resurrection.
Above the door is the Latin, “RESURRECTURIS,” which means “for those who will rise again.”
The mausoleum was designed as a Romanesque building with a domed Romanesque Classical chapel inside, complete with altar, religious murals, clerestory windows providing light and the crypts flanking the altar on either side. The papal and U.S. flags also flank the altar.
Archbishop James Edward Quigley, who commissioned the mausoleum, brought in one of the fore most religious architects of the day, Aristide Leonori, noted for his 1899 design of the Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C.
For the mausoleum’s chapel interior, Leonori generously incorporated marble and mosaics to give the chapel a Roman look while still referencing Celtic, Nordic and Slavic saints in the design. This reflected the archdiocese’s many ethnic groups and national churches.
The most recent interment was Cardinal Joseph Bernard in after his death in 1996 from liver and pancreatic cancer.