Honoring the dead by restoring  two cemetery centerpieces

Enter St. Cyril & Methodius Cemetery on Main Street in Lisbon Falls, and you will immediately be struck by the pietà located at the center of the cemetery. Modeled after Michelangelo’s famous sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the pietà depicts Mary holding the body of her crucified son.

The pietà at St. Cyril & Methodius Cemetery dates to 1943, about two decades after the cemetery was dedicated in 1926 as part of the now-closed St. Cyril and Methodius Church, which was founded to serve members of the Slovak community.

The cemetery is still in use today, but weather had taken its toll on the pietà, which was made out of cement. A close-up examination revealed erosion to Mary’s face, rusted out screws, and loose stones in the statue’s base. Noticing the statue’s condition, George Janosco, who lives in Bowdoin and is a member of Prince of Peace Parish in Lewiston, stepped in to help.

“My heart says I need to do this. I need to — not because of my heritage but because of my Catholic faith that I was given,” he says. “It’s so important to honor our dead by having something that looks presentable and respectful.”

Janosco sees it as a way of expressing gratitude for the sacrifices made by previous generations, including his grandparents and father, who are buried in the cemetery and whom he credits, along with his mother, for the gift of his Catholic faith.

“I figure if this generation doesn’t make some commitment, this and the other cemetery [Mount Calvary] is going to go downhill,” he says. “There isn’t a big flood of cash that can do projects, so I wanted to do something.”

Janosco’s care for the cemetery actually goes back decades to when he was just a youth.

“I used to mow this cemetery when I was a kid for a dollar and a half an hour, using my lawnmower, my gas, and my clippers,” he says. “So, I’ve had a great connection and a great deal of respect for the cemeteries, and my professional life was that of providing funeral services and the corporal work of mercy to bury the dead and comfort the mourning.”

Janosco later operated a landscaping business, experience that also came in handy as he took on the cemetery projects. He began work in September by arranging to have Collette Monuments professionally clean the pietà. He then set about better securing the monument to its stone base.

“When I started here, this was all loose. You could stick your hand underneath here,” says Janosco, pointing to the base of the statue. “You could actually take a stick and pass through to the other side. The only thing that was holding it in place was a pad in the middle.”

Using mortar, Janosco methodically filled in what time and nature had inched away.

“I took a shingle and put the mud on and then took another shingle and kept poking and poking and poking, using this high-performance type of cement that they use to adhere stone to buildings,” he says.

Once he was satisfied that the monument was secure, Janosco used a putty knife to patch some of the holes in the pietà and then bought cement foundation paint, applying two coats to it, with an extra coat applied to Mary’s head.

 “The Blessed Mother’s head had, like, diamonds on it because it had eroded from the weather so much, and back then, apparently, there was a lot of quartz in the cement,” he says. “It was like little pieces of quartz everywhere, and you can see that it’s still rough after pretty much three coats on the head.”

After repairing the statue, Janosco sought to restore the cross behind it but quickly noticed an issue.

“I was going to wash the cross, but I touched the cross and it went like this,” he says, making a swaying motion. “There were just two screws holding it there. By the grace of God, it was still up there, so my wife and I that night went down to Lowe’s, and we got some stainless-steel screws, and we came and screwed it in temporarily.”

The cross was washed, sanded, and stained, and with the help of his brother-in-law, Paul D’Auteuil, the cross’ beam was removed and then reattached using the stainless-steel screws. Janosco then contacted a fabricator about making a stainless-steel plate to more securely hold it in place. The fabricator suggested making the plate in the shape of a cross so that it would appear as a cross within a cross.

“That way, there will be some support,” says Janosco. “I’m thinking about longevity. I’m trying to do it right. I don’t have all the answers, so I’ve leaned on people in the professions, and they really helped me a lot in developing a plan.”

 Along with his work at St. Cyril & Methodius Cemetery, Janosco has also been restoring the white marble crucifix that is the centerpiece of Mount Calvary Cemetery, located just down the road. He washed the crucifix, removing the mildew that had discolored parts of it.

“You didn’t even notice the crucifix because it was so weatherbeaten, at least from afar, but now it all looks so beautiful,” he says.

 Janosco ground out the rock around the base, removed the memorial plaque to have it refurbished, and painted the steel cross behind the crucifix with two coats of Rust-Oleum paint.

“This is a steel I-beam so it’s not going anywhere, but see how the rust is?” he says. “We’re looking at putting stainless steel over the cross. Even though it's painted, I want it to seal the metals and prevent them from rusting anymore.”

 Janosco also repaired cracks and a hole in the cross’ base, removed old paint and rust from it, and repainted it gray.

To add to the restored beauty of the pietà and crucifix, both are now lit at night. In what Janosco attributes to the work of the Holy Spirit, he noticed what looked like a piece of an old floodlight buried in the ground near the pietà, even though there is no electricity at the cemetery. Not wanting to leave glass lying around, he dug it out but then got the idea to put in solar lights.

“Whenever I go back and forth at night, which is many times in the week, I look down there and see it still all lit up,” he says.

Janosco worked nearly every day at one of the cemeteries from September to December, as long as the weather allowed him to work outside. He says he is grateful to Father Daniel Greenleaf, pastor of Prince of Peace Parish in Lewiston, and Ken Greenleaf, operations manager for the diocese’s Office of Cemeteries, for giving him the greenlight to pursue the project, and he says he plans to be back at it in the spring.

 He says it has also been nice to see some of the other work being done to improve the two cemeteries, including cutting back some of the vegetation that had become overgrown and smoothing out the roadway.