Scattering human ashes denounced by Vatican
VATICAN CITY — Ashes to ashes is fine, the Vatican says, as long as you don’t spread them around.
On Tuesday, the Vatican responded to what it called an “unstoppable increase” in cremation and set down new guidelines barring the scattering of ashes “in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way.”
The Vatican decreed that the ashes of loved ones have no place in the home, and certainly not in jewelry. It urged that cremated remains be preserved in cemeteries or other approved sacred places.
The instructions, which reiterate the Roman Catholic Church’s preference for burial over cremation, are in line with previous teachings. But local bishops’ conferences had requested doctrinal clarification because cremation has become increasingly popular and because t h e r e we r e “n o s p e c i f i c canonical norms” for preserving ashes, according to Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doc- t r i ne of t he Fai t h, which drafted the guidelines.
The new guidelines, which Pope Francis approved this year, were released before All Souls Day, which falls on Nov. 2 for Catholics, who are called to remember and pray for those who have died.
The church banned cremation for centuries, but began to allow the practice in 1963, as long as it is not done for reasons at odds with Christian doctrine. Burials are deeply embedded in Christian tradition, and in the United States and elsewhere many dioceses still run graveyards and cemeteries, though cremation and other alternatives are on the rise.
“We are facing a new challenge for the evangelization of death,” Mueller said at a news conference Tuesday, discussing the centrality of death and resurrection for Christians.
He emphasized that the church was reiterating the “doctrinal and pastoral reasons” for burial, which it “continues to insistently recommend.”
Mueller, who was previously the bishop of Regensburg, Germany, added: “We believe in the resurrection of the body, so burial is the normal form for the Christian faithful, especially Catholics, whom we are addressing with this document.”
In that spirit, the document explains, the church cannot “condone attitudes or permit rites that involve erroneous ideas about death, such as considering death as the definitive annihilation of the person, or the moment of fusion with Mother Nature or the universe, or as a stage in the cycle of regeneration, or as the definitive liberation from the ‘prison’ of the body.”
Beyond respec t for the deceased, the document notes that burial in a cemetery “encourages family members and the whole Christian community to pray for and remember the dead, while at the same time fostering the veneration of martyrs and saints.”
Burial prevents the forgetting of the loved one, as well as “unfitting or superstitious practices,” the document states.
For that reason, the Vatican said that cremation urns should not be kept at home, save for “grave and exceptional cases dependent on cultural conditions of a localized nature.”
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