Crypt Chapel at Wernersville

Crypt Chapel at Wernersville

Catholics very often honor  bishops and benefactors by burying them in chapels under the altars of much larger chapels.   The Main Chapel at Wernersville has just such a crypt chapel, a bit below grade level and windowless.   This is the site for the remains of Genevieve and Nicholas Brady. the generous benefactors of the building and grounds, built as a Novitiate and still used by the Jesuits for a residence.   But the large building now serves mainly as a retreat house.

This crypt chapel not many weeks ago was the site of a Mass celebrated for the Jesuits in the community by Father Robert McTeigue, S.J. with Father Ifkovits as his altar server.  

He celebrated Mass in the Extraordinary Form, the Latin Mass based on rituals approved and published after 1570 and commonly used until about 1962.   In certain circumstances in these days such a Mass is celebrated publicly.   Many Catholics find devotion in it.  Indeed it was the form of the Mass known to the Bradys.   For me it was a return to the experience of my childhood church in the nineteen forties and fifties.