On the seventh anniversary of his death, Bridget Biddinger visited the grave of her brother at Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Hillside to honor his memory, as she has every year since he died by suicide on June 26, 2019.
Yet when she approached his final resting place, the 37-year-old from Plainfield noticed a crowd forming around a garden and prominent sculpture on the cemetery grounds that she had never seen there before.
“I don’t recognize that,” Biddinger thought. “That’s new.”
She was stunned to learn that, in an uncanny coincidence, Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago was hosting a prayer service and dedication of a memorial shrine commemorating lives lost to suicide as well as the loved ones who grieve them.
It is the first memorial of its kind erected by an archdiocese at a Catholic cemetery in the United States and serves as a physical testament to the church’s evolution on the matter of suicide.
Historically, the Catholic Church had denied religious funerals inside its houses of worship as well as traditional burials for those who died in this way.
Yet Catholicism — along with much of the rest of society — now offers a much more nuanced and compassionate stance, including greater outreach to those who are struggling with mental health conditions as well as increased emphasis on treatment, deterrence and spiritual consolation.
Chicago native Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intentions for the month of November included the prevention of suicide, asking the Lord to “accompany all the people who live in darkness and despair, especially those struggling with suicidal thoughts.”
During a June prayer vigil in Barcelona, the pontiff spoke with a woman who had attempted suicide about mental health issues, calling her survival “a remarkable miracle” while urging her to cherish a second chance at life.
“The Church has undergone a significant transformation in its understanding of suicide and mental illness and now recognizes that many who die by suicide suffer from mental illness and unbearable pain,” the Archdiocese of Chicago said in a statement about the new shrine at Queen of Heaven Cemetery. “The Church now embraces these individuals and affirms that they are with God, not condemned.”
The local memorial titled “At Peace,” which includes two sculptures, was designed to be ecumenical in nature and provide support to mourners of all faiths and beliefs.
Bishop Lawrence Sullivan invited the roughly 100 worshippers at the memorial’s dedication service to rise and pray.
“God of perfect peace: Pain, isolation and despair can have no part with you. You are our strength in adversity. Our hope in times of trouble. Our comfort in sorrow,” said Sullivan, vicar general of the archdiocese. “Help us to remember you care for and are present for all of your children who suffer. Sustain us with your love and wipe away our tears.”
Biddinger, who is Catholic, wept as she joined them in prayer.
She and her family had planned to be at the cemetery hours earlier and were a bit frustrated that the day seemed off-schedule.
During the memorial service, Biddinger wondered if those delays were meant to be and her brother, Daniel Paul Steik, wanted her to find a sense of solace at the memorial site so close to his grave.
“It’s just another sign that he is always with me. Maybe he pushed for us to leave later. It feels like it,” she said. “There is a comfort in this.”
Steik died at 25, the sixth child of seven in their large west suburban family.
The Plainfield South High School graduate loved animals, in particular his dog Ace and cat Sammy.
He was devoted to his nieces, nephews, godchild and family. Biddinger recalled Steik was the first to visit her in the hospital after she delivered each of her children.
“Daniel was the bravest and most gentle soul we knew,” his obituary reads. “He would never answer a question without deep contemplation and was a deeply caring and loving person to all who came to know him.”
Biddinger hopes the shrine at Queen of Heaven will help diminish the stigma that still often surrounds suicide.
Even in the seven years since she lost her younger brother, Biddinger has seen great improvement in humanity’s understanding of these deaths — from prevention efforts to bereavement groups to better rhetoric and language.
“Families of people who have died from suicide, there was a shame to it, but it’s lessening,” she added. “And I think it should be lessening.”
From condemnation to compassion
The pain and sorrow surrounding suicide are inherently different from other forms of death, church leaders noted during the recent service.
Rituals, remembrances and religious rites are particularly critical for loved ones in the aftermath, said the Rev. Charles Rubey, who roughly 50 years ago founded the nondenominational counseling and support program Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide through Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
“The church has come a long way. Years ago, decades ago, if you took your life you were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground,” Rubey said. “You were not allowed to have a Mass.”
He recalled receiving two phone calls from unrelated women whose loved ones had died by suicide; they went to their parish priest seeking prayers for themselves and the deceased.
“The first thing out of the priest’s mouth was, ‘You know your loved one is in hell,’” Rubey recounted.
After those conversations, Rubey developed a ritual to bless the sites where people had died from suicide.
“I’ve been on railroad tracks. High-rises. Offices and so forth,” he said. “Because to me that’s sacred ground. … That’s where they encountered God.”
Midway through the service, the bishop blessed the shrine grounds with holy water.
Those attending the prayer service followed him along the memorial’s paved pathway lined in brightly colored flowers and viewed its two sculptures, both designed to promote healing.
The first one features a six-foot tall bronze cast angel whose wings enfold around a granite bench; the sculpture was intended to offer the comfort of an angel’s embrace for visitors who take a seat there.
At the centerpiece of the memorial rests a 20-foot sculpture of stainless steel and bronze depicting nine rising doves, which symbolize “hope and transcendence,” according to the archdiocese.
Among those attending the dedication service was Rabbi Marianne Novak of Skokie.
While Novak was in rabbinical school, her daughter Batsheva Chaya Stadlan died by suicide in 2017.
Amid the inextricable trauma of losing her 18-year-old child, the mother had feared that traditional funeral customs might be handled differently because of the manner in which her daughter died. Would her child be buried in a separate part of the cemetery without the appropriate eulogies? Would shiva, a traditional Jewish mourning period, be shortened, if held at all?
But the powerful words of her rabbi at the time brought the grieving mother some relief: She died of an illness like any other.
Novak began attending Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide meetings and went on to become a facilitator with the program; although the grief support network was founded by a Catholic priest, Novak noted that members spanned faiths and backgrounds.
The mother said she has come to understand that suicide isn’t the result of an informed choice or rational decision.
“A healthy brain does not plan its own demise,” she added.
‘Searching for answers’
Before the service’s conclusion, the mourners at the cemetery offered a litany of petitions tailored to this unique loss.
For the families and friends of those who died from suicide.
For those who minister in the area of mental health.
For those who suffered in silence and were lost.
“Lord, hear our prayer,” the worshippers replied in unison.
From 2014 to 2024, more than a half million lives were lost to suicide in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest statistics.
In 2024, roughly 48,800 Americans died by suicide, a slight decrease from the peak of nearly 49,500 deaths in this manner in 2022. But these annual numbers have generally been climbing since 2000, when there were 29,350 suicides nationwide.
Melinda Moore, a psychology professor at Eastern Kentucky University, noted that most clergy and faith leaders receive little or no training in pastoral care for those who are suicidal or suicide-bereaved.
“It’s important for pastors, priests, clergy of all kinds — lay faith leaders, too — to understand how we now think about suicide and what an appropriate pastoral response would be,” said Moore, who was a new Catholic convert when her husband died by suicide about 30 years ago.
With a rabbi, she co-edited the book “The Suicide Funeral (or Memorial Service): Honoring Their Memory, Comforting Their Survivors,” which was designed as a resource for clergy, with contributions from a variety of faiths, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders.
“Often, addressing suicide lies in your hands as an informed spiritual leader. You will be modeling a grief journey through counseling the suicide bereaved and conducting the funeral,” the book said. “Your leadership will influence how the suicide bereaved are treated by other clergy, congregants, lay ministers, funeral directors, and others in the days, weeks, and months following the death.”
As for the shrine at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, church leaders say it was intentionally placed in a prominent location toward the front as opposed to being tucked away or hidden on the outskirts.
The bishop longs for those who are bereaved or suffering to feel a sense of God’s love there.
“Because it’s where people are searching for God, where they are searching for answers,” Sullivan said. “Not answers as to why did the person do that, but answers to what’s next. Is this it? Is this the end? And as Catholics, we don’t believe that. We believe death is not an end but a beginning.”
As Novak walked through the shrine, she thought of a traditional memorial prayer in Judaism called El Malei Rachamim, which translates to “God, Full of Mercy.”
“We pray for the souls of our loved ones and imagine them under ‘the sheltering wings of the present God,’” Novak said. “I had that image in mind from the bird and angel wing imagery of the sculptures in the garden.”
The mother remembers her daughter as “full of life — a true beauty and full of grace and poise.”
“She was smart and very funny — a fashionista and terrific dancer,” Novak said. “She was kind to everyone. When you were in her presence you felt that you were the most important person in the world.”
The memorial grounds offered the rabbi a new form of connection with her child.
“The shrine evoked in me a sense of peace for my daughter and a place to continue my relationship with her, albeit in a different way,” she added.