Two small white coffins sat side by side in front of the altar at St. Mary Church in Buffalo Grove Sept. 13. The babies who were being mourned — Mariam Jane Uddin and Ariyah Mikayla Hoover — were not related and had not met any of the people in the congregation during their brief lives.

Instead, the congregation gathered to commend the tiny girls’ souls to the care of God with all the dignity and respect they did not receive in life. 

They were the 34th and 35th babies buried by Rest in His Arms, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2005 to provide funerals for infants who have been abandoned and found dead.

“Our little organization’s mission is pretty specific and pretty unusual, but from time to time it’s necessary,” said Deacon Jim Pauwels in his homily. “We provide a funeral for each child commensurate with his or her dignity as a child of God. Each one has his or her own story, and each story is brief and tragic.”

Mariam Jane was born to a teenage girl in her eighth-floor apartment on the North Side of Chicago on Nov. 11, 2015. Her mother had concealed the pregnancy and ended up throwing Mariam Jane out her bedroom window so she wouldn’t be discovered. The baby was found, still alive, by a passer-by, but died from her injuries the next day. Her mother pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter of a family member in July.

Ariyah Mikayla was found wrapped in a garbage bag in a shed in Dolton on June 7. Police there were still investigating her death, said Susan Walker, who founded Rest in His Arms.

“Every one of their stories brings me to tears. … These little ones belong to each and every one of us,” said Walker. “They are yours and they are mine.”

The funeral included music from a choir and the voices of babies crying and toddlers playing in the pews. Fourth-degree Knights of Columbus in full regalia provided an honor guard, and three priests concelebrated the Mass. Pauwels, a member of Rest in His Arms board, assisted.

Walker started Rest in His Arms after hearing about the body of a baby boy that had been found in a Lake County landfill. She was the mother of a toddler at the time, and wanted to do something. She called the medical examiner’s office and asked if she could organize a funeral for the unclaimed child.

Then, a few months later, the medical examiner’s office called her. There were more babies. Would she help?

Many people, businesses and institutions offer assistance, she said. For this funeral, there were brides who donated their wedding dresses to make burial gowns, and seamstresses who sewed them. Glueckert Funeral Home provided its services for free, as did Catholic Cemeteries, which also gave the babies burial plots in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines. Bevel Granite Markers will provide gravestones.

Walker and Pauwels urged everyone at the funeral to make sure everyone they know is aware of Illinois’ Safe Haven law. If either of these babies’ mothers knew about the law, the babies might be alive now.

The law says a parent of an infant under 30 days old can leave that infant at any police station, hospital or staffed fire station, no questions asked. 

More than 100 babies have been saved by the Safe Haven law, Walker said, and some attended Mariam and Ariyah’s funeral with their families.

The funerals have become less frequent as the Safe Haven law has been expanded and become better known. In the first 16 months of her ministry, Walker buried 16 babies. Now, the last funeral before the one at St. Mary was more than a year ago.

However, another funeral was planned for Oct. 3 at St. Patrick Parish in McHenry, Illinois. The five babies to be buried then have all been at the McHenry County Coroner’s office for over 10 years, Walker said.

Dawn Fitzpatrick, senior coordinator for Human Dignity and Solidarity for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said the archdiocese works with crisis pregnancy centers such as Aid for Women and the Women’s Center, which offer support and resources to women in crisis pregnancies before and after they have their babies.

Cardinal Cupich sent a letter of condolence for the funeral, written before it was known that Ariyah would also be buried that day.

“I am with you in your grief,” he said. “It is important for us to articulate the dignity and value of Baby Mariam’s short life. She is a sister to us all.”

Pauwels said it’s natural to ask why these things happened, but that’s not what the mourners were there to do.

“We’re here for the victims of those circumstances and those decisions,” he said. “God doesn’t abandon his children. Your witness to these children’s worth and dignity is important. You’re saying lives matter, even the lives of the tiniest and least wanted among us.”

To the babies, he said, “We wish we could have been there to catch you when you fell, and to rescue you from the darkness.”