Disposing of ashes

By Fr Martin Sirju

Vicar General and Cathedral administrator

Many Catholics are not sentimental like me regarding burying the ashes of the dead. For decades now, families have been doing their own thing. This year I was only made aware when someone asked what the Church teaches regarding ashes of a deceased family member.

I have done so many funerals where the body was cremated. After that, I never bothered to ask families what they did with the ashes. I simply presumed they would inter the ashes in a cemetery. However, everyone seems to be doing their own thing.

The Vatican said what was to be done with ashes from a cremation in a 2016 Instruction entitled Ad resurgendum cum Christo (To Rise With Christ), with further clarification in a Note of December 2023. Both came from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

So, what were some of the practices I encountered? Some family members still have the ashes of their loved ones in urns they have not interred. This is not only over a period of some months but years. In one case, the mother’s ashes were kept at home and, when the father died years later, her ashes were interred in his grave.

In some instances, the ashes were scattered on an estate, in the sea, or in a river. Vatican guidelines say this ought not to be done as it does not treat the remains of the dead person with the respect fitting the doctrine of the resurrection. It also risks seeing the ashes purely as returning to Mother Nature, again eclipsing the importance of the doctrine of the resurrection.

Some of the ashes of loved ones were also divided and put into lockets and given to family members. Others were open to the idea of human-composting, again the idea of returning to nature.

The Vatican, in its 2023 Note, gave permission for two practices. It states: “A defined and permanent sacred place can be set aside for the commingled accumulation and preservation of the ashes of deceased baptised persons, indicating the identity of each person so as not to lose the memory of their names.

“In addition, the ecclesiastical authority, in compliance with current civil norms, may consider and evaluate a request by a family to preserve in an appropriate way a minimal part of the ashes of their relative in a place of significance for the history of the deceased person, provided that every type of pantheistic, naturalistic, or nihilistic misunderstanding is ruled out and also provided that the ashes of the deceased are kept in a sacred place.”

My own preference has always been for burial, whether the body or ashes. I think it is important to remember people, our parents and others, the lives that shaped us, people who suffered for us.

People say they can do that without a visible marker of any kind—grave, tomb, columbarium. Memory is what is important. They also add: “Who would remember us 100 years from now anyway?” We are all destined to fade with history.

All of this is true but at the heart of Eucharist is anamnesis or ‘calling to mind’, like what the Jews do at Passover. For us Catholics, a grave or tomb is another way of ‘calling to mind’.

Interestingly, when we go on pilgrimage, we look forward to seeing the tombs of saints and martyrs. They put us in touch with a communion that is not only intellectual but tactile. That’s why people visit the catacombs of Rome or touch reliquaries with the relics of Saints.

It saddens me to see the practice of lighting candles on graves at All Souls’ fall apart. I think it is part of the “throwaway culture” that Pope Francis spoke about. We are disposable.

Sometimes relatives themselves contribute to this by telling their loved ones: “I want nobody coming to my grave to cry.” Others say it is too costly to maintain cemetery plots; others are afraid of crime. Most of all, people don’t feel the need to. A certain Christian sensibility is almost gone.

I have never felt the need to have the ashes of my parents—if they were cremated—with me. But I can understand the desire for it. Death can be so devastating, we cannot face it all at once as we used to; we need something to help us through grief. Keeping the ashes is one way of doing so but I hope not permanently. At some point we have to let go.

The Vatican disallows scattering of ashes in the wind, land or sea/river. I agree with this ruling, but I don’t think people will follow it. People who have spent most of their lives in the air like pilots, or on the sea like sailors/adventurers, or farmers for whom the land is life may very well opt for scattering.

While my preference is for burial, I sympathise with those who would choose scattering. I think one can argue that in the end it does not matter whether you scatter, bury or inter, since neither contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection. Once you believe Christ is risen. Nothing else matters.