Marriage and Family Life Supplement
Greensburg couple says miscarriage ministry ‘has definitely been God’s doing’
Within the cemetery of St. Mary Parish in Greensburg on Jan. 20, a statue of Jesus smiling and holding a baby marks the site of a section for burying miscarried babies called Little Souls Cemetery, a concept of Covenant Resources Miscarriage Ministry founded by Rebecca and Chris Harpring of St. Mary Parish. The couple’s son Louis served as the model for the baby in the image, created by Michael McCarthy of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis exclusively for the Harpring’s use. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)
By Natalie Hoefer
GREENSBURG—Rebecca Harpring was heartbroken when she saw her online lab results. As a nurse, she knew what the low pregnancy hormone levels meant: she was going to miscarry the cherished 6-week-young life within her.
In the following torrent of emotions and thoughts that day in February 2016, one urgent desire rose to the top.
“I just wanted to bury my baby,” says Harpring.
But an exhaustive local search for the right supplies was unsuccessful. Harpring had to settle for an empty pill bottle for the diminutive remains of the child she and her husband Chris named Agnes Marie.
An infant plot was larger than needed for the tiny remains. So, using a small casket made by Rebecca’s father, the Harprings buried Agnes Marie on Chris’ grandparents’ plot in the cemetery of St. Mary Parish in Greensburg, where the couple and their four living children are members.
They miscarried another child later that year—Andrew Paul—and buried him on the same plot.
“As more people heard about the burials, we heard people saying, ‘I wish I would have known I could do that’ or ‘I would have but had no place to bury them,’ ” says Harpring.
“That’s when Chris and I said, ‘Maybe we can bring something good out of our own loss.’ ”
So began the idea that is now Covenant Resources Miscarriage Ministry, with God “leading the whole process,” says Harpring.
The national, online non-profit creates totes with miscarriage burial supplies, guides the process for cemeteries to create a miscarriage burial section (called a “Little Souls Cemetery”), offers online resources and more.
Harpring summarizes the ministry’s mission more simply: “Our goal is to provide dignified care to miscarried babies and their families.”
‘Having that grave gives them a visual’
Creating a non-profit was not even a thought when Harpring experienced her miscarriages.
“I knew each of our babies had a soul,” she says. “I wanted to give them a dignified burial like I would any other child I would have of any age.
“Being able to have that final burial place has been able to provide a sense of closure as well,” she adds. “We go out there and say prayers on their death dates or Memorial Day, or just random visits to pray. It’s enabled Agnes and Andrew to still be a part of the family.”
And for the couple’s four living children, ages 3-10, “Having that grave gives them a visual to appreciate and understand that they have two other siblings,” Harpring adds.
The couple was open with family, friends and
St. Mary parishioners about their miscarriages and
the burials.
“That’s when people started saying, ‘I wish I would have done that,’ ” she recalls.
Some women spoke of feeling uncomfortable talking about their loss after a miscarriage, says Chris, co-owner and executive president of an engineering company his father founded in Greensburg.
“So often, moms would say they didn’t even want to talk about it because people just don’t know what to do with that information,” he says. “Or they face an attitude of, ‘You never had the baby, you never held the baby, so what’s the big deal?’ ”
He says parents burying or memorializing a miscarried child “helps them understand that yes, it was a baby, and yes, they did lose a child.”
The couple developed an idea for St. Mary’s cemetery to help such parents. They shared the idea with their pastor, Father John Meyer, early in 2017, and “he supported it 100%.”
‘Room to help more families’
The concept was to create a “Little Souls Cemetery” section specifically for miscarried babies—by medical definition, those less than 20 weeks’ gestation. (Loss after that point is called “stillbirth,” which involves different burial requirements in Indiana.)
“So, for miscarriages, we’re talking remains of no more than about 10-11 inches,” says Harpring, a former pregnancy care center director and former natural family planning practitioner.
“If a cemetery has a section for infants, that’s wonderful. But those plots are usually a few feet, and the remains of a miscarried baby don’t really need that much space.”
Little Souls Cemetery plots are 8 inches square. The smaller size also “means there’s not as much expense involved, and there’s room to help more families,” says Harpring.
The section also includes a place for plaques to memorialize babies miscarried in the past.
In 2019—two years, two newborns and “lots of meetings” later—the Harprings had a design to present to the parish community for financial support.
The response was tremendous, taking “only a couple of weeks” to raise the necessary funds.
After a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Little Souls Cemetery section was completed in 2022. Father Meyer celebrated a Mass at the site to consecrate it.
Previously submitted names of 29 miscarried babies were read aloud during the Mass, an act Harpring says many people found moving.
“For some, it might have been the first time somebody was acknowledging their baby as a life,” she says.
It’s a form of honor still offered during St. Mary’s Mass in memory of miscarried babies each October during Miscarriage Awareness Month. (Related: Office of Marriage and Family Life website offers miscarriage resource)
The Harprings took extensive notes as they researched and planned the Little Souls Cemetery. They now offer the notes as guidance for cemeteries nationwide to create a Little Souls section. One now exists in Greensburg’s public cemetery, and discussions are under way with a cemetery in southeastern Indiana.
‘Getting supplies out there’
But without the proper supplies for a miscarried child’s remains, burial is not even an option.
Harpring recalls her own frantic local search ahead of her first miscarriage.
“I called the hospital where I was going to deliver,” she says. “I called my doctor’s office. I called the emergency rooms at the [local] hospitals, and I called both funeral homes in Greensburg.
“I could’ve mail-ordered these things, but my need was immediate. And that’s not uncommon. Many women miscarry early and might not have even had their first doctor appointment.
“That’s why it’s so important, getting the supplies out there and readily available so that a woman can have what she needs to retain that baby’s remains for burial.”
Harpring felt called to fill that need.
In 2019, she began creating totes with various ranges of miscarriage burial supplies—plastic receptacles in varying sizes, silk sleeves to wrap them in, instructions, prayer cards and more, even the option of a 10-inch upholstered casket.
The intent was not to wait for women in need to seek out the supplies through the ministry.
Rather, the totes are “intended for hospitals, doctor offices, funeral homes, pregnancy care centers—even churches—to help women who have miscarried or know they’ll miscarry,” Harpring explains. “Each tote has enough supplies to help several women, then [the providers] can easily re-order what they gave out.”
The key is for such places to make women aware that they have miscarriage burial supplies available.
“It may be uncomfortable to broach such a sensitive topic as miscarriage,” says Harpring. “But it’s important for these places to let women know, ‘Just in case you ever miscarry, we have these things to help you.’ Or to let their staff or congregation know so they can tell a woman in need, ‘Here’s a place you can go that can help.’ ”
‘A very humbling experience’
As demand for the totes grew, the Harprings felt God calling them to expand the reach and vision of Covenant Resources Miscarriage Ministry, which became a non-profit organization in 2023.
They developed new tools for the organization’s website: a list of cemeteries nationwide with a section for miscarried babies, books, Little Souls rosaries, memorial ornaments, links to helpful resources, and more.
“Right now, we have talked with a family, gotten a family a Little Soul’s ornament or gotten miscarriage supplies into at least 24 states,” says Harpring.
The children have become more involved as they’ve aged, she adds.
“John has been there from the beginning,” Harpring says of the couple’s 10-year-old son. “He decided there should be a reception after the [Little Souls Cemetery] dedication Mass. He dressed up in a suit and went to stores asking for drinks and packages of cookies.”
Now he, Philomena, 7, and Louis, 6, help Harpring fill the totes. Even 3-year-old Albert is starting to catch on.
“He understands that we do something with babies,” says Harpring. “If we’re out somewhere and he hears someone talking about babies, he tries to get in my purse to give them a business card and a holy card.”
Last July at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, John helped steer people to Covenant Ministry’s booth in the event’s exhibition hall. Harpring met many people—including some who had benefited from the ministry.
“It was a very humbling experience,” she recalls. “There were lots of tears shed, lots of hugs. Lots of women saying, ‘Keep this up, don’t ever stop. We need this.’
“It was interesting meeting people who had used supplies from totes at places that offered them and said, ‘Because of that, I was able to bury my baby.’”
‘This has been all God’
While Covenant Resources is focused on the dignified burial of miscarried babies, Harpring is quick to note such a gift is not always possible.
“We always like to make sure we let women know that if you did not bury, if you flushed the toilet because you were in shock, if you didn’t know where to bury: You didn’t do anything wrong,” she assures. “You did the best you could. We never want a woman to feel like she was a bad mother if she didn’t bury” her miscarried child.
Every aspect of the ministry is focused on mercy and compassion—which is not surprising, given the source Harpring credits for the ministry’s conception.
“This has been all God,” she says. “I’ve told Chris more than once, ‘All I wanted to do was bury my baby, and look what happened.’
“When we buried Agnes and Andrew, we didn’t have any intent of starting this [ministry]. When we started the cemetery, we had no intent of it becoming a 501(c)3. But God just keeps guiding it.”
The couple has learned to trust that guidance. Through COVID delays and other challenges, they discovered that “God had a better plan than we did, and it was on his timing,” says Harpring. “We would step back and realize he had a better way of doing something than we did.
“This [ministry] has definitely been God’s doing. He’s making it into something we could have never imagined.”
(For more information on Covenant Resources Miscarriage Ministry, go to www.covenantresources.org.) †
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