By Mike Latonad
ITHACA, N.Y. (OSV News) – While cleaning out your house or a loved one’s, you come across a batch of rosaries, crucifixes and other religious artifacts. You hesitate to throw them out, recoiling at the thought of treating such spiritually significant items as mere garbage.
Yet you may not wish to keep them for yourself.

What to do?

One popular option – as Erika Lindsell knows from experience – is to leave the goods at the local parish. Lindsell, the administrative assistant at Immaculate Conception in Ithaca, has often found boxes full of religious objects on the office doorstep upon arriving for work.

“People leave stuff there figuring the church will know what to do with it,” Lindsell remarked. The rub, she said, is that it’s not so simple for parishes to place the objects, especially if there are large quantities.

Earlier this year, Lindsell received an email from a ministry in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, addressing that very dilemma. The organization, St. Mary Recycle Mission Group, offered to come to Immaculate Conception to pick up unwanted items belonging to the parish and parishioners, repurposing them for use elsewhere.
“I thought, ‘Hey, now this makes a lot of sense,’” Lindsell told the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester.

A drop-off took place at Immaculate Conception’s weekend Masses July 27-28. On July 29, the recycling ministry – essentially a two-person operation – took away many containers full of religious items, as well as a Stations of the Cross set the parish no longer needed.

St. Mary Recycle Mission Group is operated by Kimberly Walters, a Catholic who formerly lived in the Diocese of Rochester and attended church at Rochester’s Our Lady of Victory Parish. She travels with her husband, Mike, all over the northeastern United States, letting parishes know in advance they’ll be in their area if interested. They arrive in town with their pickup truck – and, if the need calls for it, a trailer that serves as their warehouse back home.

Walters and her husband go to as many as 40 churches in a week. Their recent trek involving Immaculate Conception also included stops at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, the Carmelite Monastery in Pittsford, St. Joseph Church in Penfield and St. Patrick Church in Victor.

The couple hauls away such used items as vestments, crucifixes, statues, rosaries, chalices, altar ware, candlesticks, tabernacles, relics, monstrances, holy medals and cards, linens, framed religious pictures, musical instruments and prayer books.

At St. Patrick Church, the parish published in its bulletin a list of religious items the group would accept for several weeks over the summer in advance of their July 26 pickup date, according to Cathy Fafone, secretary at the parish.

“It’s a lot. It’s labor intensive,” Walters said of the pickup process.

Objects are eventually shipped by request to other churches and individuals, including in Third World countries. Walters said all items are donated, not sold, noting that few have any real monetary value due to their age.

The ministry’s website, www.StMaryRecycleMissionGroup.com, offers contact details so those interested can access a full list of accepted objects, state their needs, and arrange for deliveries and exchanges. Walters prefers to work with objects not needing repairs, although the ministry is able to arrange for some refurbishing. Her local Knights of Columbus council helps with the restoration and placement of items as well as travel expenses; Walters assumes the bulk of the ministry’s operational costs.

The recycling effort got its start after Walters rescued several religious articles in usable condition from a dumpster at a Rochester-area parish in 2004. She eventually sent hundreds of items to a New Orleans parish that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The initiative has grown since Walters’ move to Lancaster 18 years ago – largely, she said, due to goods becoming available through church closings.

Walters said her ministry is faithful to Canon 1171 in the Code of Canon Law, which states: “Sacred objects, which are designated for divine worship by dedication or blessing, are to be treated reverently and are not to be employed for profane or inappropriate use.”

Walters strives to find homes for all of her inventory, regardless of knowing which objects have been blessed by a priest or deacon: “We try not to let anything go to waste.” However, she has burned and buried some items, especially those in poor shape. Doing so, she said, reflects more reverence in the eyes of the church than if they were thrown out.

Yet by and large, Walters manages to place her abundant stock. Her unique ministry can be exhausting – “Every day I wake up with 15 voicemails” – but she’s happy that God has assigned her this special mission.
“I think it’s a great purpose, myself,” she said. “It becomes a passion; it drives me.”

(Mike Latona is senior staff writer at the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester.)