ENFIELD — The wrought iron gates of the La Salette Cemetery are normally closed. But they were open one day last month, allowing a small group into an open area this is set apart by stone walls and lined with tall trees that filter in the mid-morning light.

As a lone violinist played, members of the Lay Associates — who have long supported the La Salette Shrine and its Catholic ministries — passed out programs, prayer cards and flowers. Enfield’s John Markowitz walked around taking photographs as the crowd drew closer, some seated under a dark green tent.

Along with Markowitz were his wife, Sharon, and daughter, Amy Mancini. So, too, was June Partridge, a longtime lay associate, and Paul Mitiguy, who had spent portions of his summer at the shrine since the mid-1970s.

They were gathered in front of the simple headstones of generations of La Salette brothers and Mary Keane, a key benefactor of the shrine.

“We are celebrating life,” said the Rev. John Sullivan, who led the shrine for the past eight years. “Love is what it’s all about.”

They also were there, in part, to say goodbye.

At the end of September, after 96 years in Enfield, the La Salette order left the shrine, mainly due to a declining number of priests entering the order. The Enfield Shaker Museum purchased the roughly 28 acres for $1.5 million in what many have called a full-circle moment: In 1927, the La Salettes moved to Enfield after purchasing around 1,500 acres of land from the Shakers, a religious sect that was in decline.

While the Shaker Museum is still working on a plan for the property, the statues and the hillside above Mascoma Lake will stay as is. There are even plans in the works to continue the shrine’s annual holiday light display.

The ceremony at the cemetery was one of many events held throughout the course of the summer to mark the end of an era.

There was a reunion for those who attended the seminary school. There was a picnic hosted by the Knights of Columbus. And finally, there were Masses that coincided with the anniversary of the Apparition, when Mother Mary is said to have appeared to children in the French Alps on Sept. 19, 1846, which launched the order of the La Salettes.

At the cemetery, the Lay Associates read the names of the cemetery’s eternal occupants over the sound of passing traffic on Route 4A. Congregants and the Very Rev. William Kaliyadan, the provincial superior at the order’s main shrine in Attleboro, Mass., shared memories.

“This place will always be with us,” said Kaliyadan, who had previously served as the priest at Sacred Heart Parish in Lebanon.

Attendees scattered to place flowers on the gravemarkers. After a concluding prayer, some lingered a bit longer sharing stories about the missionaries who impacted their lives. Mancini and Mitiguy gathered with others to share memories from their childhoods at the shrine. The kids who grew up there were like extended family, they said, and those bonds — no matter how many years had passed — remained strong.

Congregants had known for years that the La Salettes were struggling to recruit new priests. They’d seen their own congregation dwindle, in line with national trends of declining church attendance. And they’d nearly been here once before, in 2015, when the shrine was slated to close but was saved at the last minute. Still, the sense of loss in the final weeks was palpable.

“I understand that they needed to do this,” Sharon Markowitz said. “I understand fully, and I’m sad.”

There was a sense of relief when the Shaker Museum reached an agreement with the La Salettes to purchase the property, sparing it from development.

“I think this is the best possible scenario that could have taken place, really,” John Markowitz said.

When the closure was announced earlier this year, the Lay Associates, Sullivan and the Rev. Joe Gosselin, who lived at the shrine for the past seven years, worked with the La Salettes’ headquarters in Attleboro, Mass., to plan how to say goodbye.

John Markowitz got to work on creating a commemorative booklet, consulting with people who have served the shrine over the decades.

Mitiguy made plans to travel to Enfield. The Lay Associates and others reached out to brothers and priests who had connections to the shrine. They notified their extended La Salette family about the closing services, which were scheduled to take place in September.

They also used the time to reflect on what had brought them to La Salette and the community they had found there — both with God and with each other.

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions, but I will tell you that the community will still prevail here and continue to grow,” Partridge said.

A call to serve

There was a moment in the summer of 1980, when John Markowitz was driving up Route 4A, preparing to move his young family to La Salette Shrine in Enfield, where he briefly questioned whether he was making the right decision.

“I’m thinking, coming up here, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing? Is this place going to be as pretty as or as nice?’ And it turned out to be every bit of that,” Markowitz recalled.

The couple were in their 30s with two young children when they left their home in Wolfeboro, N.H., near Lake Winnipausake, a community they loved, to move to one they were still getting to know.

They made the decision, in part, because they wanted a different lifestyle. They spent a lot of time working to make ends meet and did not have as much time for their family or their faith. The Markowitzs had already been volunteering monthly at the shrine when an opportunity presented itself to live there.

“It was really moving to the unknown with a family,” Sharon Markowitz said during an interview at the North House at La Salette, alongside her husband and their daughter. “We really put our faith in God and said, ‘Hey, if you want us to do this, you better help us along here.’ And it did. It worked out for us.”

Mancini was 5 years old when her family moved into an apartment above the Shaker Museum that had been established by the La Salettes. John Markowitz served as the curator of the museum and Sharon Markowitz worked in various roles at the shrine. They became one of four families living on the property.

This was when the La Salettes still owned the original 1,500 acres, which became Mancini’s playground. She swam and went water skiing on Lake Mascoma and ice skated there in the winter. She rode her bike up the hillside, around the Rosary Pond and went cross country skiing on the trails. (Decades later, Mancini’s own children would learn to ride their bikes at La Salette.)

“It was interesting to raise kids here because there was a freeness for them,” Sharon Markowitz said. There also were always trusted adults looking out for all the children, whether it be priests, brothers or other families. “We didn’t worry about her because we were … a community taking care of the children.”

When Mancini attended kindergarten at Enfield Village School, the priests and brothers would regularly pick her up from school. Each family naturally developed relationships with the dozens of brothers, priests and missionaries who lived at or visited the shrine.

“They were truly our family,” Mancini said.

As a young child, it puzzled her that her classmates didn’t have a similar upbringing. Then as she grew older, she sometimes wished for a more “normal” childhood, especially on Saturday nights when she was at Mass and her friends were elsewhere.

“But the overwhelming sense is that I was so fortunate to have all these different people in my life,” Mancini said.

Mitiguy started visiting La Salette in the mid-1970s, when La Salette ran a summer boys camp called Camp Pius XI. After the camp closed, he moved onto Bethany House, a summer program run for older boys, where June Partridge and her late husband, Russ, oversaw a house full of 20 young men.

The boys farmed the land alongside the brothers and worked in the cannery. They sold food at the shrine’s farmstand. They spent time in prayer with the brothers and priests.

“It’s one of those things that’s difficult to explain,” Mitiguy said in an interview during the shrine’s final weeks.

When his friends in suburban Massachusetts would ask how he was spending his summer, he’d struggle for the words. Yes, it’s a religious community, he’d tell them. But it was more than that. It was a summer camp where the boys also learned skills like carpentry and landscaping.

“You felt so free,” he said.

There was also a freedom in exploring the Catholic faith. The structured church setting and its routines didn’t always resonate with Mitiguy. Working in the fields alongside the brothers and talking about God did.

“You sweat with them, you pray with them. You go to the lake and you go fishing, and you’re immersed with God and nature in the same breath,” Mitiguy said. “And I was like, all right, I am now connecting in a much more deeper way with the way I experience God.”

Partridge arrived at La Salette in the late 1970s. She and her husband were living in northern New Hampshire at the time and they both worked for schools where they had summers off. Bethany House, where they spent roughly a decade, became their vocation.

“It’s very difficult to really explain … why we were drawn here,” Partridge said during an interview at the shrine. “I got the calling, number one, and to me this is a very, very holy place.”

A period of transition

When the Markowitzs moved to La Salette in 1980, they knew the property was for sale. The La Salettes had encountered financial difficulties and made the difficult decision to put the vast majority of their land on the market. But in the meantime, those who lived at the shrine carried on. Families camped at lakeside chalets. There was a conference for Christian athletes and other retreats.

Then in 1985, the 1,500 acres were sold to a group of developers. While the new owners gifted back around 28 acres to the La Salettes, the scope of the La Salettes’ presence in Upper Valley was forever changed. Priests and brothers still lived there, but their numbers were greatly diminished.

“The transition was brutal,” Mitiguy said.

The family ministry programs had proven popular, but with the sale, all those would come to an end.

“It was an amazing thing to lose. There (was) a real downsizing and the ability for the community to be physically present together.”

He’d just completed his undergraduate studies and was about to start a graduate program in California. That first summer after the sale, Mitiguy did what he always did: return to La Salette. He split his time between working for the developers and volunteering at the shrine. Since the mid-1970s, Mitiguy — now a professor at Stanford — has visited La Salette nearly every summer.

“This is home,” he said.

The transition was difficult for the Markowitzs, too: Not only were they losing their home, they were losing their jobs. They bought land off Route 4A near the shrine. The brothers and priests — their extended family — helped them build their new house. One, a trained electrician, wired their home; another painted the doors.

Other families who lived at the shrine bought homes nearby. The community they established stayed together; Mancini babysat for the families’ children. John Markowitz went to work as a recreation director and Sharon Markowitz went to work as a nurse.

“It was heartbreaking in a way,” Sharon Markowitz said of when the family left the shrine in 1987. “But I think that’s when we started searching a little further into realizing that it was the spirit of La Salette that really was inside of us that kept us going.”

In 1988, she helped start the La Salette Lay Associates. It’s also what brought Partridge to live in Enfield permanently. Two years after her husband died, she made the move.

“My community is here,” Partridge said. “(We) support each other and pray together and hang out together and celebrate together.”

Saying goodbye

In the 38 years since the majority of the property was sold, a core group still stayed together. Priests still presided over daily Mass and the beloved Festival of Lights continued. The Lay Associates and other volunteers supported the shrine, along with other community causes. Since the war broke out in Ukraine, they’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars for humanitarian aid. They continued to spread the word about La Salette and its mission of reconciliation.

That community was there for each other in the final days, when those who love La Salette came out in force. There was a Saturday night Mass, led by Gosselin, who had lived at La Salette for seven years, and Sunday morning, led by Sullivan. Each weekend Mass included a trip up the hillside to pay respects to Mother Mary and recount the story of the Apparition.

“For a lot of people who are here, it’s very painful to see the La Salettes walk away,” Gosselin acknowledged during his homily Saturday night. “There will always be the spirit here,” he added, just like the spirit of the Shakers remained after they left.

Throughout the weekend, Sullivan and Gosselin asked congregants to reflect about the next steps the Lord could be asking them to take in service of La Salette. They offered up prayers for the Shaker Museum.

“Nobody’s alone,” Sullivan emphasized, looking around at the faces in the dim light. “There’s so many people. We are a team. I find that hopeful,” he added.

Within the next few weeks, Sullivan would be leaving La Salette for a Georgia parish where he’d put his Spanish skills to good use. He took the jokes about going to a warmer climate in stride, and the ones about the stairs that took him up his living quarters at the North House that he’d no longer have to climb. But when he spoke, there was a layer of sadness. He was taking the closure of the shrine hard, multiple congregants had remarked over the weeks.

“Don’t forget,” Sullivan continued. “We’ve got God and we’ve got one another.”

That strength in one another carried through to Tuesday morning, the last public Mass, where hundreds of people packed into the chapel. Brothers, sisters, missionaries and other religious figures had traveled to pay their respects to the shrine. There were men who as boys attended La Salette’s seminary school, La Salette Associates from Attleboro and priests from churches throughout the Upper Valley.

Sullivan and Gosselin stood at the back of the chapel, greeting those who entered. “I feel very honored to be able to do this,” Gosselin remarked at one point. And there’s a sense that, if it had to end, it should be like this, a celebration of the community that was built in Enfield.

There are “countless reasons” for gratitude Sullivan said during the Mass and went on to list all those who had contributed to the day-to-day of the shrine. He saved a special thank you for the Shaker Museum “for giving us hope for the future.”

There was applause and hugs from other religious figures on the altar. There were eyes glowing with tears from the group. Sullivan took it all in and then he offered his final words.

“What a beautiful response,” he said, looking around the chapel. “All I can think of is Jesus and Mary with a big smile. Look at our family.”

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221. Alex Driehaus can be reached at adriehaus@vnews.com.