Catholic Cemeteries: Gast Monuments owes us money
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For days, CBS 2 has reported on families still waiting on memorials from Gast Monuments they paid for.
Headstones and other markers, but they never received them.
Until now, Gast has been essentially blaming the Chicago Archdiocese for the delays.
Now, Only on 2, the Archdiocese Diocese of Chicago is talking to Sabrina Franza about why they stopped allowing Gast to operate inside Catholic Cemeteries in the first place.
"She wasn't paying the setting fees for the ones in the system. So at one point, we said, 'Don't add any more.'"
Ted Ratajczyk is the Executive Director of Catholic Cemeteries.
He's talking about Katie Gast, general manager of Gast Monuments, which CBS 2 exposed had not been delivering memorials to cemeteries, even though dozens of grieving families had fully paid for them.
"It's like these the people that have died or forgotten. We don't want people to feel like they're forgotten," Ratajczyk said.
Catholic Cemeteries claimed Gast owed them around $22,000 in setting fees, which helped install and maintain monuments. That's why they stopped allowing them to install new memorials.
Gast blames the Archdiocese of Chicago. Gast previously told us:
"There are memorials that are not ready. And those families are being prioritized over families whose memorials are ready," Gast said.
Catholic Cemeteries denied this.
"We do not have problems with anybody else," Ratajczyk said.
They said they're customers of Gast as well. They use Gast and other companies to produce monuments families order directly through Catholic Cemeteries.
"We dispute the fact that we're trying to squash small business. We are a fan of small business. We use small businesses for our memorials for any other products that we purchase," Ratajczk said.
Gast Monuments is now able to submit new applications. It said it removed the applications that weren't ready in order to add new ones.
The Archdiocese of Chicago claimed it removed the ones that weren't paid for, so new ones could be submitted.
It's not clear what happens to the families whose applications were pulled.
"Families are saying they've had the money. She took them out of the system," Ratajczyk said.
The Archdiocese of Chicago wants to hear from anyone that has paid Gast in full and still missing their monuments to see if they can pick up the memorials instead.
