An Open Letter on The Ecclesiastical Treatment of Human Remains

My Fellow Priest:

If you recover the body of a murder victim, please proceed as all priests are taught and obligated to proceed:
(1) the body when brought into the church for a Funeral Mass is to be covered with a pall and placed near or before the altar, not upon it, and not naked;
(2) celebrate obediently the Funeral Mass according to the rubrics of the Church;
(3) offer up obediently the prayers that are to follow the Funeral Mass, and then proceed to take the body to its place of burial;
(4) complete obediently the rite of burial as laid out by the Church.

This is serious matter. Disobedience is the foundation of all deliberate sin.

I give you now merely my own fraternal command: “You shall not use the bodies of the dead to make political statements.” The end does not justify the means.

Fraternally yours in Christ and his Church:

Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.

(image via Pixabay)