Faculty members, students and alumni are taking part in a one-of-a-kind field experience to preserve the remains of 62 nuns interred at the Loretto Heights campus in southwest Denver.
Leading the disinterment efforts is Michala Stock, Ph.D., assistant professor of Anthropology at Metropolitan State University of Denver and director of the school’s Human Identification Laboratory. The nuns belonged to the Loretto congregation, which is devoted to service and justice through education and still operates today, and will be reinterred at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Wheat Ridge. The sisters’ passion for education makes it fitting that Stock recruited current Roadrunner students and alumni to apply their archaeological training in this effort, dubbed “Operation Sacred Rescue.”
“It’s an exercise in reverence and service to a community, as well as the opportunity for students to put their academic preparation into action,” Stock told RED.
Read the full story in RED to learn about the Loretto Sisters’ history and view a photo gallery of the excavation efforts.